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THE 



TEACHING AND INFLUENCE 



OF 



SAINT AUGUSTINE 

AN ESSAY 

WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO RECENT MISAPPREHENSIONS 

BY 



t\ 



JAMES FIELD SPALDING 

RECTOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 




NEW YORK 

JAMES POTT AND COMPANY 

1886 









Copyright, 1886, 
By JAMES FIELD SPALDING. 



ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED 

BY RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, 

BOSTON, MASS. 



^?^- 



Below are given the principal works and editions referred 
to in the following pages : — 

Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Opera omnia. 
Opera et studiis monachorum ordinis Sancti Benedicti. (Parisiis, 
1836.) 

Library of the Fathers. New issue. (Oxford and London, 

1879.) 

The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. A new 
translation. (Edinburgh, 1876.) 

Select Anti-Pelagian Treatises of St. Augustine, with an Intro- 
duction by William Bright, D.D. (Oxford, 1880.) 

A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination. By 
J. B. Mozley, D.D. Third edition. (London, 1883.) 

Histoire de Saint Augustin. Par M. Poujoulat. (Paris, 1846.) 

Der heilige Augustinus, dargestellt von Carl Bindemann. 
(Greifswald, 1869.) 

Evenings with the Skeptics. By John Owen, Rector of East 
Anstey, Devon. (London, 1881.) 

The Continuity of Christian Thought. By Alexander V. G. 
Allen, Professor in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, 
Mass. (Boston, 1884.) 



THE TEACHING AND INFLUENCE OF 
SAINT AUGUSTINE 



One result of the Catholic revival which has visited 
the Church of England, and indeed the entire Anglican 
Communion, during the present century, has been to 
awaken and renew interest in the study of the Fathers. 
The appeal so continually made to antiquity has been 
taken up and carried on from one point to another in 
our modern life ; and it can be no matter of surprise, 
but should be cause for deep gratitude, that it has met 
so full and hearty a response. Sincerity of spirit, ear- 
nestness of purpose, and patience in actual research 
have led honest inquirers to satisfactory results. The 
wisdom, learning, intellectual grasp, spiritual percep- 
tion, or clear insight into Holy Scripture ; the profound 
reasoning, soaring imagination, or acute speculation of 
these ancient writers has been marked and admired. 
Although, from the very necessities of the case, they 
have been judged far inferior in some ways to modern 
writers, in others they have been found to be as far 
superior to them. In thought and expression and 
philosophical theory it has been seen again and again 

5 



6 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

that they have anticipated the moderns, and readers 
have been surprised to find that what they supposed 
was original to the nineteenth century was in the writ- 
ings of the first or second. More than all else, the 
practical consensus of antiquity upon cardinal matters 
of doctrine, or discipline, or worship, has yielded testi- 
mony which has been invaluable ; and the Church's 
teachings, seen in this concentrated light of ancient 
interpretation, have come to be more definitely dis- 
cerned, and her holy ways more devoutly loved. If a 
wholly different animus has appeared to actuate any 
in their investigations, as may be noticed in certain 
recent writings about the Fathers, even this has not 
been without advantage. The extreme of inaccuracy 
of statement or fancifulness of conjecture, the farthest 
reach of free-thinking in aversion to Catholic dogma or 
sacramental grace or the authority of the Church, — 
all this has been but a strong incentive to urge many 
who never before inquired to look into the Fathers 
for themselves, and see whether these things were so. 
Not seldom the arguments of detractors have over- 
shot themselves and proved too much, and thinking 
men have been content to say that it was very strange 
that this or that great Doctor of the Church should 
have been held in universal esteem for so many cen- 
turies, for the grandness and comprehensiveness of his 
teaching, and that his real place of littleness and bigotry 
should be the discovery of to-day ! 

Moreover, the differences and the agreements be- 
tween the earlier and the later Fathers, or between the 



MOTIVES FOR STUDYING HIS WRITINGS J 

Greek and the Latin Fathers, have been put under 
examination. While there have been found natural 
variations, such as one would expect, from the distinc- 
tion between the Eastern and the Western type of 
mind, habits of thought, surroundings, or climatic in- 
fluence ; or as between the first century and the fourth 
or fifth, in the advancement of civilization, the growth 
of the Church, or the power of the State, a thorough 
investigation, as we believe, has not revealed those 
radical differences which some have claimed between 
the orthodox East and the orthodox West ; — as if 
the Greek and the Latin theologies had nothing in 
common upon the broad, underlying truths, e.g. of the 
presence of God in the world or in the Church, the 
Incarnation of our Lord, Divine grace, human sin and 
human freedom. 

Confessedly pre-eminent among the Latin Fathers, 
— many would say among all the Fathers, — is S. Au- 
gustine. His natural gifts and acquired powers were 
so remarkable, the extent and variety of his writings so 
great ; his impress upon his own age was so weighty, 
his authority throughout the Western Church for the 
next thousand years so unshaken ; and the range of his 
subsequent influence has been so wide and deep, that 
history has brought down to our day no name among 
Illustrious Christian thinkers and teachers so familiar. 

In this very fact, with what it implies, lies the secret 
of our desire to say something anew upon his life and 
work. The familiarity with the name of S. Augustine 
is, of course, on the part of very many, even intelligent 



8 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

people, in this busy age, only that, — a familiarity with 
the name ; they live, all unconsciously, under the power 
of his master-spirit. Others, again, both in the Church 
and in the dissenting bodies about us, have a more or 
less mistaken conception of this great saint and Father : 
— they almost take away his individuality, and identify 
him in their minds with Luther, or Calvin, or Jansen ; 
while they think of his teaching as chiefly some dread- 
ful notions of predestination and original sin and eter- 
nal punishment. Both these classes of people need to 
gain a knowledge of S. Augustine. Others still, who 
years ago may have been careful students of his writ- 
ings, may find benefit in observing, from the new per- 
spective, of present individual experience or of the ideas 
of our time, the relative proportions of his opinions and 
doctrines ; having learned, perhaps, with fuller knowl- 
edge and riper wisdom, to put a fairer estimate upon 
his life and work ; to enter, with more sensitive appre- 
ciation, into his spirit ; more accurately to understand 
his teaching; and thus, more truly than ever before, 
to comprehend his greatness. 

One other object we have in view; — to say a few 
words upon the influence of S. Augustine. We do not 
regard that influence in the distant past and up to 
the present hour either as unmixed evil, or as more 
evil than good. Accordingly, we should not think 
with satisfaction of what has been called " the linger- 
ing hold of Augustine upon the modern mind." Nor 
do we see any reason to suppose that his influence is 
really waning. We believe that the centuries to come 



HIS INFLUENCE 9 

will fully uphold the just verdict of the present and 
the past, not of blind admiration, or servile follow- 
ing, or unquestioning assent ; but of glad recognition of 
unwonted powers of mind and heart loyally and on the 
whole wisely exercised, in defence of great doctrines 
of Holy Scripture, and in maintenance of the ministry 
and sacraments of the Church. That he committed no 
error of doctrine, we do not say ; he never claimed in- 
fallibility for himself ; in his humility he was farthest 
from any such pretence ; he is not our master, nor has 
the Church ever accepted all his system of doctrine ; 
as has been justly observed, " she is free from all bond- 
age to the letter of his writings ; she is not his, but he 
is hers." 

We do not propose to speak with any fulness of S. 
Augustine's life ; yet, even at the risk of repeating 
what may be known, we shall trace its main events ; for 
the history of his life is wonderfully bound up with the 
history of his opinions. He was born at Thagaste, in 
Numidia, November 13, A.D. 354. His father, Patricius, 
was then a heathen. 1 His mother, Monica, was a de- 
vout Christian. His father's opposition may have pre- 
vented his being baptized in infancy. His mother did 
all she could ; and made him a catechumen by the cere- 
monies then in use in the Church. 2 When he was quite 

1 He became a Christian late in life, won by the example and persua- 
sion of the holy Monica. 

2 In Wall's Hist, of Inf. Baptism, Vol. I. p. 403, etc., a fa>r explana- 
tion is given why Augustine was not baptized in infancy, in answer to 
the supposition that infant baptism was not then practised. 



IO SAINT AUGUSTINE 

a young child, he was near being baptized, at his own 
request, in serious illness ; but on his recovery the 
sacrament was again postponed, in part, now, from his 
mother's wish, who foresaw the temptations of youth, 
and dreaded the greater guilt of sin after baptism. 
(Confess. 1. i. c. n.) In spite of her fond instructions, 
his boyhood soon showed an extraordinary degree of 
waywardness. He hated his studies, and had to be 
whipped to his tasks. Latin he naturally acquired with 
ease, and more from listening than from lessons {Conf. 
i. 14) ; and he has left on record his exceeding love for 
that language ; but all else was " a burden and a punish- 
ment," and emphatically the Greek tongue, for which 
he seems to have continued to cherish a dislike, and in 
which he never gained high proficiency ; although his 
ignorance was not such as to justify the contemptuous 
statements which have been made upon the subject. 1 
At the age of sixteen we find him, after having been 
for a time at school in Madaura, a neighboring city, 
spending a year at home, while his parents saved money 
to send him to Carthage to complete his studies. That 
year of "imposed idleness" must have been one of 
great peril to him, just at that age, and with such a 
nature and habits as he had. His Confessions tell of 
the development of vice which then went on within 

1 His own admissions of slight knowledge, — " prope nihil " he calls it 
in one place, should be taken in connection with passages in his writings 
which prove the extent of that knowledge. A great number of such have 
been collected by Abp. Trench in his S. Augustine as an Interpreter of 
Scripture^ pp. 20-22. For his own statements, cf. Conf. i. 13, 14; Con. lit. 
Petil. ii. 38; De Trin. iii. 1 ; De Doctr. Christ, ii. n-15. 



EARLY AND STUDENT-LIFE II 

him. His father seems not to have been much con- 
cerned, and his mother's warnings and entreaties were 
only despised (Conf. ii. 3), though both were but "too 
anxious " that he should get learning, the one with 
motive of worldly advancement, the other to bring him 
nearer God. Soon after this his father died ; and the 
subsequent expense of his education was partly met 
by a wealthy fellow -townsman. His student-life of 
three years in Carthage (from seventeen to nineteen) 
was one of gay, wild, licentious dissipation, and yet of 
high attainment in his studies. He shone especially in 
rhetoric, (a department which included far more then 
than now,) and found himself at the head of the school. 
{Conf. iii. 3.) The reading of Cicero's Hortensius first 
awakened in him the love of philosophy. Urged by 
the spirit of that book, and doubtless recalling his early 
Christian instructions, he began to look into the Holy 
Scriptures ; but soon turned away, not thinking them 
worthy to be compared with the dignity of Cicero. 
(Conf. iii. 5.) His attention was next taken by Mani- 
chaeism, whose claim of divine inspiration and promises 
of knowledge and truth (Conf iii. 6 ; vi. 5) proved a 
ready snare ; and, once captured, he was held for nine 
years. He embraced this heresy just at the close of 
his student-life. Returning to his native town, to teach 
rhetoric, his zeal was at once shown for the success of 
his new opinions ; and he was increasingly elated with 
pride that by his dialectic skill he could overcome any 
opponents. Among others, he had won over to Mani- 
chaeism a friend whom he had known from a child. 



1 2 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

This friend fell sick ; he was baptized into the Christian 
faith ; he rebuked the error of Augustine ; he died. 
His death filled Augustine's soul with grief; and the 
circumstances may have also created a longing for a 
comfort in grief which perhaps the Christian faith 
would supply. In his revulsion of feeling he left Tha- 
gaste and went back to Carthage. Here he remained 
several years, " for love of gain making sale of loquacity," 
as he afterwards describes it. 1 His dissatisfaction with 
Manichaeism was all this while increasing ; he saw, 
more and more, that its doctrines of God and the world, 
and especially of evil and its nature, were vain delu- 
sions. As a system, it had not kept its promises of 
wisdom and truth ; and when at last he got no answer 
to his difficulties in a long-desired conference with 
Faustus, their most distinguished bishop, he became 
disgusted with the sect, and determined to abandon it. 
This was in his twenty-ninth year. (Conf. v. 3, 7.) 
Very soon after (probably in A.D. 383), contrary to his 
mother's wishes, and deceiving her at the time of his 
going {Conf. v. 8), he removed to Rome, in response to 
inducements of friends, who represented that in that 
city he would gain higher honors and advantages, and 
chiefly that he would have a more quiet set of students. 
There, not unnaturally, from his connection with the 
sect, he still associated with the Manichaeans. But his 
defence of their opinions must have been only outward. 
The fact is he was utterly unsettled, " hopeless of find- 

1 At this time, in his twenty-seventh year, he wrote his first work Be 
apto et pulchro % which has been lost. 



MANICHAEAN AND SCEPTIC 13 

ing the truth " (Con/, v. 10), and, knowing not what to 
think or believe about God or himself, he was already 
half inclined to fall in with the supposed views of the 
Academics, and doubt everything. Almost immediately 
on his arrival he had been visited with a serious illness. 
After his recovery, he soon found that the students here 
were quite as undesirable as those at Carthage, though 
in a different way ; and so he was very glad of an op- 
portunity which now offered of taking a public profes- 
sorship of rhetoric at Milan, and thither he came. 

Here he was most kindly received by S. Ambrose, 
the Bishop of that see, whose influence was to be so 
powerful in bringing him to the Christian faith. At 
first Ambrose's eloquence charmed him ; then his ex- 
planations of Scripture won him ; and he gradually 
found, to his mingled shame and joy, that for so many 
years he had been opposing an utter misrepresentation 
of Christianity, — " barking, not against the Catholic 
faith, but against the parables of carnal imaginations." 
{Con/, vi. 3.) But he was no little time in being brought 
even thus far. Entirely renouncing Manichaeism (Con/ 
v. 14; vi. 1), much inclined towards the Academics, who 
" long detained him tossing in the waves " (De Beata 
Vita, 4), and actually becoming again a catechumen, 
this was only " until something certain should show 
itself to him." (Con/ v. 14.) He continued long in 
the darkness of universal scepticism, in utter despair 
of ever finding the truth within or without the Church. 
(Con/ v. 13; vi. 1.) Even when he was made to see 
his past misapprehensions, through fear he kept holding 



1 4 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

back from assenting to anything ; and so his soul, "which 
could not be healed but by believing, lest it should 
believe falsehoods refused to be cured." (Con/, vi. 4.) 
It must be owned that he was now largely convinced, 
intellectually, by the extent of the authority of the Holy 
Scriptures and of the Christian faith throughout the 
world (Con/, vi. 5, 11) ; and this test of authority came 
to have an increasing weight with him, and to be always 
put be/ore reason in the demand /or faith. 1 But the 
moral nature of Augustine needed a thorough renova- 
tion. He admits he was followed more and more closely 
by a Divine mercy which he knew not ; — "I became 
more wretched, and Thou nearer " (Con/, vi. 16) ; while 
the fear of death and the judgment which never left 
him, alone recalled him "from a yet deeper abyss of 
carnal pleasures." (Id.) It is a most sad picture to 
contemplate ; and it must ever be a wonder that his 
high gifts and powers, now so degraded and defiled, 
were not utterly destroyed by his licentious indulgence. 
His hot, passionate temperament even from youth 
seems never to have been restrained from the fulfil- 
ment of sensual desires. For these many years he had 
been " befouling the spring of friendship with the filth 
of concupiscence." (Con/ iii. 1.) While a student at 
Carthage, he had become a father ; and his son he had 
piously (?) named Adeodatus. His mother had often 
desired marriage for him ; now her plans seemed likely 
to succeed ; he sent back to Africa the mother of his 
child ; but, having become so base a slave to carnal lust, 

1 Cf. Ep. cxviii. 32. 



DRAWN TOWARDS THE TRUTH 15 

he could not wait for the maiden whom he was to marry ; 
and ended in only putting away one mistress to take 
another. {Conf. vi. 12, 15.) And all this time, while 
his " sins were being multiplied," his intellect was 
soaring to loftiest heights of speculation upon religious 
questions, of the nature of God and the soul, of incar- 
nation and redemption, of the origin of evil, of the 
authority of Scripture, of the bounds of reason and 
faith, etc. — all which were to him thus far only specu- 
lative questions. But God was leading him. The Pla- 
tonic (or perhaps more strictly Neo-Platonic) doctrines 
proved an efficient awakening influence. In this phi- 
losophy, which he ever after considered to be the best 
of the old systems and to contain deep spiritual wisdom, 
he now found a mighty incentive. It was so rich in 
truth, — and yet it stopped just short of what he most 
needed, — the great truth of the Incarnation, the humil- 
ity of the Lord Jesus, the Word made flesh ! So Pla- 
tonism moved Augustine to turn again to the Holy 
Scriptures, and especially to S. Paul's Epistles {Conf. 
vii. 21); and this time it was to find in God's Word, 
under the interpretation of the Church, the divine 
foundation of faith, the all powerful motive to a holy 
life. We need not dwell upon the further incidents 
previous to his conversion. He could no longer say he 
had no clear perception of truth ; " now it was certain " 
(Conf. viii. 5), he was convinced, he was persuaded. 
The lower animal desires, and these alone, made him 
continue to hesitate a little longer ; and they had a 
wonderful power over him to the very day of his con- 



1 6 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

version ; but at last, after many violent struggles, coming 
to a firm purpose on this point, and willing resolutely 
and thoroughly (Conf. viii. 8), through deep anguish 
and many tears and prayers, the conflict was ended in 
submission and peace. When we think of what Augus- 
tine's career had been thus far, it is not strange that, 
in the mighty reaction which came upon him, he should 
have adopted henceforth the celibate and the ascetic 
life. "Thou didst so convert me unto Thyself," he 
says, " that I sought neither a wife nor any other of 
this world's hopes." {Conf. viii. 12.) Herein his case 
is not to be made a law or guide for others ; any more 
than his subsequent peculiar teachings upon marriage 
need be accepted in their entireness. 

Augustine's conversion took place in the summer of 
A.D. 386. Resigning his professorship as soon as vaca- 
tion gave him opportunity, he spent some months in 
retirement with certain of his friends at a villa a few 
miles out of the city. Here he composed his treatises 
Contra Academicos, De Ordine, De Beata Vita, and the 
Soliloquiorum duo Libri. He was baptized by S. Am- 
brose, in his church in Milan, on Easter-eve, the 25th 
of April, A.D. 387, and with him his son Adeodatus 
and one of his most intimate friends Alypius. His 
mother was the happy witness of his baptism, rejoicing 
in the answer to her many prayers. They determined 
to return to their native country ; but at the port of 
Ostia, Monica, who felt that she had no more to live 
for, now that her son had become a Catholic Christian, 
fell ill and died. Changing his plans, Augustine re- 



CONVERSION AND ORDINATION \J 

mained in Rome until the next year, and wrote the De 
quantitate animae, the greater part of the De moribus 
Ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum> and 
began the De Libero Arbitrio, which he finished some 
years later, (a.d. 395.) In the summer of a.d. 388 
he returned to Thagaste, where he founded a small 
religious community, at whose head he continued for 
three years ; during this period writing the De Genesi 
contra Manickaeos, De Musica, De Magistro, and De 
Vera Religione. The fame of his ability and devotion 
soon spread. He was eagerly sought, for more active 
labors ; and in a.d. 391, against his own wishes, ac- 
cording to a custom then prevalent, he was ordained 
a priest by Valerius, Bishop of Hippo, for service in 
the church of that city. Here his eloquence in preach- 
ing was equalled only by his loving zeal for the Church, 
and his power in controversy against her mistaken oppo- 
nents. Besides discharging the duties of the priest- 
hood, he now found time to write several exegetical 
works, as well as the important treatises against the 
Manichaeans, De Utilitate Credendi, and De duabus 
A7iimabus > and the Disputatio coritra FortimatutnS In 
a.d. 395, at the age of forty-one, he was consecrated 
Bishop, as coadjutor to Valerius, 2 who died after a few 
months, leaving him Bishop of Hippo. From the time 

1 This tract Milman thinks " gives the fairest view of the real contro- 
versy " with the Manichaeans. History of Christianity, Vol. II. p. 278. 

2 From Ep. ccxiii., written in a.d. 426, we learn that both Valerius 
and himself were ignorant of the inconsistency of the consecration of 
coadjutor bishops with the injunction of the 8th Canon of the Council 
of Nice. 



1 8 SAINT A UG US TINE 

of his ordination to the priesthood, he had continued 
the mode of living in religious community, which he 
had established at Thagaste. Now, as Bishop, with 
his clergy about him, he maintained great plainness of 
food and dress, and even in his ministrations is said to 
have refused to wear costly vestments. 

We cannot dwell upon the long episcopate of S. 
Augustine. It became more and more celebrated, until 
his was the great name throughout the Western Church. 
This wide reputation came principally from his zeal and 
ability in defence of Christian doctrine. His philo- 
sophical spirit, logical acumen, and dialectical skill, 
wonderfully helped by a glowing imagination and most 
facile use of language, with a foundation of considerable 
learning, and certainly of deep spiritual comprehension 
of Scripture, proved powerful means of winning mul- 
titudes to Christian allegiance, and mighty weapons 
against the opposition of heresy and schism. He had 
himself gone through dreadful conflicts with sin and 
doubt, in coming to the peace and stability of Chris- 
tianity. He had some definite idea of what the Christian 
faith and the Christian Church, sin and salvation, Divine 
grace and human frailty meant. Living in a time of 
intense worldliness and of real decline of spirituality, 
of dissension and open strife among those who called 
themselves Christians, and of the lingering power of 
paganism upon all classes of society, he deemed the 
promotion of a right Christian belief and of a Christian 
living which legitimately flowed therefrom, not a mere 
matter of opinion, but one of divinely revealed obliga- 



PRINCIPAL WRITINGS 19 

tion, — one which he ought to urge with all the powers 
which God had given him. Known eminently from that 
day to this as a controversialist, his place of honor as a 
theologian, and the wide and full range of his abilities 
as a teacher in the Church cannot be questioned. 

We naturally find his mature energies first directed 
against the Manichaeans, from whose snares he had 
recently escaped. In addition to the treatises which 
he had already written, he now produced other and 
more extensive works against them ; among which may 
be mentioned the Contra Epistolam Manichaei qnam 
vocant fundamentiy the long work Contra Faiistum, in 
23 books, the De Natura Botzi, and the Contra Secundi- 
nurn> which last was his own preference among his 
writings against Manichaeism. {Retract, ii. 10.) 

In opposition to the Donatist schism, its unscriptural 
doctrines and fanatical practices, he wrote a number of 
works, mostly between the years 400 and 412; the 
principal ones being the Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, 
De Baptismo, Contra literas Petiliani, and the De Uni- 
tate Ecclesiae. 

Perhaps of more distinct significance than any of the 
works hitherto named, — certainly of much more wide- 
reaching influence in the history of Christian doctrine, 
were his writings against Pelagianism. These were 
some sixteen in number, called out, one after another, 
by the exigency of the situation, from a.d. 412 on to 
the close of his life in a.d. 430, — one being left un- 
finished. The very titles of most of these works show 
the general nature of their contents, and the greatness 



20 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

of the subjects considered ; e.g. De Spiritu et litem, De 
natura et gratia, De perfectione justitiae hominis, De 
gratia Christi, De peccato originali, De anima et ejus 
origine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, De correptione et 
gratia, De praedestinatione sanctorum, De dono perseve- 
rantiae. 

Along with these writings against Manichaeans and 
Donatists, and the early part of those against the 
Pelagians, S. Augustine was producing also many mis- 
cellaneous short treatises, upon various topics of faith 
and morals, too numerous even for enumeration here, 
but which are of much value, and have had a lasting 
reputation : his extensive exegetical works, chiefly upon 
the Psalms and upon the writings of S. John, formed 
part of his labor ; he was constantly preaching, and 
some four hundred well authenticated sermons of his 
have come down to us ; moreover, there have been pre- 
served more than two hundred of his Epistles, many of 
which were elaborate monographs. 

We do not forget, and we would make special refer- 
ence to three other great works of his, either one of 
which would have enshrined his name in perpetual re- 
membrance. Surely S. Augustine's was not only an 
industrious life, that, with all the cares of his Episco- 
pate, he could write so fully as we have already stated ; 
but it was the life of a man of remarkable genius, won- 
derful richness of mind, and depth of spiritual insight, 
which could produce the Confessiones, the De Trinitate, 
and the De Civitate Dei. The Confessiones were written 
about the year 400 (some say 397). The De Trinitate, 



OTHER GREAT WORKS 21 

which many have thought to be the loftiest work of his 
genius, occupied him at least sixteen years, from a.d. 
400, and perhaps a longer time. He shrank from pub- 
lishing it to the last ; and probably would not have 
done so when he did, and without further revision, had 
not the unfinished work been stolen and made public. 
The De Civitate DeiwdiS, begun in a.d. 413, and com- 
pleted in a.d. 426. This has been generally regarded 
as his master-piece ; and it is so well known that it does 
not need, any more than the Confessiones, any full analy- 
sis in this place. Presenting to his own age a bold and 
convincing apology for Christianity, it became to all 
ages the earliest philosophy of history ; and in both 
aspects the work has high claim upon the grateful re- 
gard of mankind. Its range of thought is very wide ; 
it comprises some of its author's most mature opinions 
upon topics of philosophy and theology ; it anticipates 
many of the speculations of modern times. 

A few words upon the Retractationes may complete 
our sketch of S. Augustine's literary labors. In this 
work, written in a.d. 427 or 428, he carefully reviews 
his previous writings, of course explaining former opin- 
ions by present ones, and, where possible, striving to 
bring the earlier views into harmony with the later. 
For him to have pursued any different course would not, 
it would seem, have been thought strange by some who 
have unduly criticised his criticism of himself. 1 We 

1 Neander's Hist, of the Christian Religion and Church, (Torrey's 
transl.) Vol. II. p. 694; Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine, etc. p. 360; 
Owen's Evenings with the Skeptics, Vol. II. p. 140. 



22 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

leave to the bitterness of scepticism the rash implica- 
tion that this aged saint had now lost all his comprehen- 
siveness and Christian charity ; and that the opinions he 
now rejected would make a better Christian creed than 
those he accepted. 1 He wrote of himself with a candor 
generally admitted ; explaining, qualifying, and, where 
he thought necessary, contradicting what he had pre- 
viously written and even admitting former opinions to 
have been downright errors. Thus much it is well for 
us to note just at this point ; for even aside from special 
influences which we know had great weight in the latter 
part of his career, it was only natural that any one who 
had lived so long and written so much should have 
uttered contradictions. It is often said that S. Augus- 
tine can be quoted in favor of diametrically opposed 
doctrines. This is to a certain extent true, and for the 
reason which we have given. He had a deep humility. 
He thought a man to be " more a consummate fool than 
perfectly wise " of whom it could be said that he had 
never uttered a word which he did not wish to recall ; 
that the highest standard was to have never uttered a 
word which it would be his duty to recall ; and that he 
who had not attained to this, should take the second 
place through his humility, as he could not take the 
first through his wisdom. 2 Accordingly his estimate of 
himself (and let any prove that it was not the correct 
one) was that consistency was not of so much worth as 
to have made progress. 1 He says at this time that he 

1 Owen, ut supra. 2 Ep. cxliii. 3. A.D. 412. 3 Id. 2. De don 

persev. 55. 



CLOSE OF HIS LIFE 23 

is writing the Retractationes to demonstrate that even 
he himself has not in all things followed himself ; admits 
that he did not begin from perfection, and has not yet 
in this age (74 years) reached perfection ; and affirms 
that there is good hope of him whom the last day of 
life shall find so progressing, that whatever is wanting 
may be added, and that he may be adjudged rather to 
need perfecting than punishment. 1 

In a.d. 429 the Vandals under Genseric invaded 
Africa, at the invitation of Count Boniface, who had 
been deceived into rebellion against the Empire, and 
had summoned the barbarians to enable him to main- 
tain himself. Discovering the treachery which had 
been practised against him, and returning to his alle- 
giance, it was too late to save the country from the 
invaders. They readily made allies of the Donatists 
throughout the provinces, and fiercely pressed on in 
their career of conquest. Boniface retired to Hippo, 
and the city was besieged. In the third month, on the 
28th of August, a.d. 430, the aged Bishop, who had 
been bitterly tried by the miseries of the times, and 
thought that men ought to ascribe Africa's calamities 
to their own sins, was mercifully taken away, after not 
a long illness. With the words of the Penitential 
Psalms written out and hung on the wall before his 
eyes, he had bade his friends leave him to himself as 
much as possible ; and so he spent the last few days in 
solitude, and prayer, and tears. He died a penitent. 

1 De don. persev. 55. 



24 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

In going on to a survey of the principal teaching of 
S. Augustine, we shall first follow the line of the three 
great controversies which have been referred to. He 
has very important and characteristic points of teach- 
ing which do not directly concern either of those con- 
troversies, though they may be found in part in the 
writings which they called out. Such doctrines we 
shall subsequently consider to some extent. At the 
outset we must say that we shall not aim at any treat- 
ment of S. Augustine's philosophy proper. 

Manichaeism, of the writings against which we are 
first to speak, was a strange, eclectic system, founded 
upon the ancient Chaldaism, combining therewith Per- 
sian and (in the West especially) Christian elements. 
Its prominent mark was its absolute dualism. Teach- 
ing without compromise the two principles of good and 
evil, light and darkness, both of them eternal, and both 
eternally distinct, it practically taught two gods. From 
this dualistic beginning it developed a most fantastic 
mythology ; while, connected with its weird fancies 
about creation and nature, it established an ethical 
theory of bald materialism, whereby the work of life 
was made to consist in the constant effort to separate 
the elements of light from the darkness ; which meant, 
in actual morality, a greater or less degree of ascetic 
abstinence with no end beyond itself. The Manichae- 
ans spurned Judaism, and equally spurned Catholic 
Christianity. Yet in the West they called themselves 
Christians, and their organization in some points faintly 
resembled that of the Christian Church. They rejected 



PRINCIPLES OF MANICHAEISM 25 

the Old Testament, and basely perverted the New ; they 
held spurious dogmas of a Trinity, an Incarnation, and 
an Atonement ; professing to believe in Christ, who 
was to them only a phantom, they took what they 
pleased of the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles, and 
with their own interpretation. The system proclaimed 
loud promises of knowledge and wisdom to all who 
were in search of truth, and professed to require noth- 
ing to be received which had not the proof of reason. 
Such permitted rationalism in belief, such inducement 
of "spiritual benefits on the basis of the religion of 
nature," had made Manichaeism widely popular in the 
West ; and it was in North Africa that it gained its 
largest following. 

Augustine, who had perhaps been won to the system 
chiefly by its plausible theory of the origin of evil, was 
delivered from it very much through its failure to sat- 
isfy his deeper questionings on this same subject. Now 
he set himself to oppose its many errors, with earnest- 
ness and confidence in the truth, and at the same time 
with a gentleness and meekness and desire to restore 
rather than to discomfit his adversaries which are worthy 
of note, as not only shown here, but as being the spirit 
which he uniformly maintained in controversy. " Let 
those treat you angrily," he says, "who know not the 
labor necessary to find the truth, and the amount of 
caution required to avoid error." . . . "Let those treat 
you angrily, who know not with what sighs and groans 
the least particle of the knowledge of God is obtained." 
..." Let neither of us assert that he has found truth," 



26 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

he exhorts ; " let us seek it as if it were unknown to us 
both." ' 

The teachings of S. Augustine against Manichaeism 
relate principally to the Being of God, the nature of 
good, the nature and origin of evil, the freedom of the 
will, the authority of Scripture, the limits of reason and 
faith. Much of what he here says about God, and about 
evil, is also given more fully and in more direct connec- 
tion with the hold which Manichaean error once had upon 
him, in the Confessions. God is the one, almighty Creator, 
infinite in goodness and power. He is spirit ; not the 
material existence which Manichaeism fancied Him, with 
properties of extension into space ; 2 yet a real Being, 
not an empty phantasm. 3 He is "the unchangeable 
Light," yet not "the corporeal brightness " which he 
once conceived Him to be, — "a bright and vast body, 
and [himself] a piece of that body." 4 "God is His own 
eternal happiness, . . . His own eternal light ; " 5 . . . 
"the God we worship did not abide from eternity in 
darkness, but is Himself light, and in Him is no dark- 
ness at all ; and in Himself dwells in light inaccessible ; 
and the brightness of this light is His co-eternal wis- 
dom." 6 God is unchangeable and incorruptible. " It 
cannot properly be said of the real substance of God 
that it has the choice of sinning or not sinning, for 
God's substance is absolutely unchangeable. God can- 
not sin, as He cannot destroy Himself." 7 God is the 

1 Con. Epis. Man. ii. Hi. 2 Conf. iii. 7; con. Epis. Man. xv. xix. 
3 Conf. iv. 5, 7, &c. 4 Conf. iv. 2, 16; vii. 10. 5 Con. Faust, xxii. 9. 
6 Id. xxii. 21. 7 Id. xxii. 22. 



AGAINST DUALISM 27 

chief good of all His creatures ; for He is the supreme, 
the true existence? " To reach God is happiness itself." 2 
He is " the author of all natures ; " 3 hence, all natures, 
as such, are good ; and it is the nature of good, that it is 
all from Him ; while it is the nature of evil (negatively), 
that it is not from Him. Augustine goes farther than 
this, and sets forth now the teaching to which he always 
adhered, that evil has no real existence, — it is but the 
negation of existence. "There is no nature contrary 
to God. . . . You ask me, Whence is evil ? I ask you 
in return, What is evil ? . . . Evil is that which is con- 
trary to nature ; . . . Evil is no nature, if it is contrary 
to nature. " 4 Again, "The second kind of good is called 
a creature, which is liable to hurt through falling away. 
But of this falling away God is not the author, for He 
is the author of existence and of being. Here we see 
the proper use of the word evil ; for it is correctly ap- 
plied not to essence, but to negation or loss" s "When 
the Catholic Church declares that God is the author of 
all natures and substances, those who understand this 
understand at the same time that God is not the author 
of evil. For how can He Who is the cause of the being 
of all things be at the same time the cause of their not 
being, that is, of their falling off from essence and 
tending to non-existence ? For this is what reason 
plainly declares to be the definition of evil." 6 

Yet this which has no true existence, and is thereby 

1 De Mor. Manich. i. 2 De Mor. Ecdes. xi. 3 Con. Epis. Man. 
xxxiii. * De Mor. Manich. i. ii. 5 De Mor. Manich. iv. 6 De 

Mor. Manich. ii. 



28 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

proved to be not from God, Augustine owns fills the 
heart with fear. {Conf. vii. 5.) " Whence is it ? " — he 
once and again exclaims. Against the Manichaeans, 
who argued that they sinned from natural necessity, — 
it was not they, but the nature of darkness in them 
{Conf. vii. 3), he put the origin of sin and of evil in the 
freedom of the will. " There is no need " he says " of 
the origin of evil in an imaginary evil nature " (referring 
to the original dualism of this system), " since it is to be 
found in free-will. . . . The origin of sin is in the will ; 
therefore in the will is also the origin of evil. . . . You 
take away the origin of evil from free-will, and place it 
in a fabulous nature of evil." 1 But what is that free- 
will, it may be asked, to which Augustine here refers ? 
— that of man in his original state, or of man as fallen ? 
Plainly the former : — and yet it is an open question 
whether he did not use the term, during all this period, 
both of the one condition and of the other. Because 
he writes, e.g. in certain connections in the De Libero 
ArbitriOy that he is speaking of that freedom in which 
man was created, 2 it has been perhaps too necessarily 
inferred that he must be always so understood in that 
treatise. 3 That he meant to represent this cause of sin 
as an original, self -determining power — whether before 
or after the Fall — is abundantly manifest. Witness 
such passages as these : — " Since the will is the cause 
of sin, and you ask the cause of that will ; if I can dis- 
cover this, will you not also seek the cause of this cause ? 

1 Con. Faust, xxii. 22. 2 1. iii. c. 18. 3 Mozley's Aug^n Doctr. etc. 
p. 206. 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL 29 

And what limit of seeking can there be, what end of 
inquiry and discussion, — since you ought not to go be- 
yond the root ? " l " But what can be the cause of will, 
antecedent to will ? For either there exists the will 
itself, and there is no going back of that root of will ; or 
there is no will, and in that case no sin. Either, then, 
the will itself is the first cause of sinning, or no sin is 
that first cause." 2 Again, a true freedom, or power of 
choice, seems to be ascribed to man in his present state 
in the De Duabus Animabus. And what else but a true 
freedom in man fallen is implied in this passage ? — He 
has been speaking of the angels as so created that they 
had the power of restraining their desires from the un- 
lawful ; and in not doing this, they sinned. " Great, 
then," he continues, " is the creature man, for he is re- 
stored by this potentiality -, by which, if he had so chosen, 
he would not have fallen." 3 It is the same power which 
restores him that originally kept him. Whether S. 
Augustine afterwards came to deny free-will under the 
pressure of the Pelagian controversy, must be considered 
in its proper connection. But that he now maintained 
it, in its self-determining power, and found therein the 
only satisfactory cause of evil, as against the Manichaean 
notion of necessity, may perhaps be admitted, with but 
little, if any, qualification. 4 

What he says upon Holy Scripture, forms a very im- 
portant part of S. Augustine's teaching at this period. 
In one of these treatises occurs his well known declara- 

1 De Lib. Arbit. iii. 48. 2 Id. iii. 49. 3 Con. Faust, xxii. 28. 

4 Cf. Neander, ut sup. Vol. II. p. 626. 



30 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

tion, " I should not believe the gospel, except as moved 
by the authority of the Church," J — wherein he openly 
affirms the true ground for the authority of Scripture, 
and takes a position from which there can be no alter- 
native but the individualism which he charges against 
Faustus ; — " Your design clearly is to deprive Scripture 
of all authority, and to make every man's mind the 
judge what passage of Scripture he is to approve of, 
and what to disapprove of." 2 These Manichaeans re- 
jected the Old Testament, but professed to receive part 
of the New. S. Augustine defends the whole, as the 
Word of God, 3 handed down in the Church from the 
Apostles, 4 and exhibiting clear proofs of its claims in 
the extent of its conquest of the world. 5 He maintains 
the oneness of Scripture, and shows that where there 
are apparent contradictions, there is real harmony. 
This principle he urges, as between different portions 
of either the Old or the New Testament, and especially 
as between the Old and the New. One will stand or 
fall with the other. The Old Testament he considers 
as chiefly typical, in both conduct and precept ; as fore- 
shadowing the New, and particularly telling of Christ. 

1 Con. Epis. Man. v. It is amazing to find the objection actually 
raised by a clergyman of the Church {Continuity of Christian Thought, 
p. 150), that "the Church for which is claimed such supreme authority, is 
not the consentient reason of those who are enlightened by a divine 
teacher speaking within the soul"! — i.e. it is something different from 
that " human consciousness " which this writer regards as " the ultimate 
source of authority in religious truth" (pp. 17, 59, 60) ; but it is something 
definite and visible, the institution of God in the world. 

2 Con. Faust, xxxii. 19. 3 Id. xxii. 16. 4 Id. xi. 5. s Id. xxii. 60. 



SCRIPTURE AND ITS INTERPRETATION $1 

" No one doubts,*' he writes, " that promises of tempo- 
ral things are contained in the Old Testament, for which 
reason it is called the Old Testament ; or that the king- 
dom of heaven and the promise of eternal life belong 
to the New Testament. But that in these temporal 
things were figures of future things which should be 
fulfilled in us upon whom the ends of the world are 
come, is not my fancy, but the judgment of the Apostle. 
. . . We receive the Old Testament, therefore, not in 
order to obtain the fulfilment of these promises, but to 
see in them predictions of the New Testament ; for the 
Old bears witness to the New. . . . Nor do we believe 
that the holy and spiritual men of these times, the 
patriarchs and prophets, were taken up with temporal 
things. For they understood, by the revelation of the 
Spirit of God, what was suitable for that time, and how 
God appointed all these sayings and actions as types 
and predictions of the future. Their great desire was 
for the New Testament ; but they had a personal duty 
to perform in these predictions, by which the new 
things of the future were foretold. So the life as well 
as the tongue of these men was prophetic." 1 This 
matter of symbolism and allegory S. Augustine often 
carried too far, as we know, in his interpretation of 
Scripture, especially of minute events in the historical 
books ; only regretting, as he says again and again, that 
the length of his writing already will not permit him to 
go farther in his fine-spun analogies. 2 And yet, in his 
supreme regard for the inner meaning of Scripture, it 

1 Id. iv. 2; xxii. 24. 2 Id. xxii. 86. 



32 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

must be owned that he kept sight of the literal sense, 
— according to a general rule of interpretation among 
the Fathers ; * here in his controversy against the Mani- 
chaeans, he examines the literal sense of each of these 
narratives " before he touches the sacramental or mys- 
terious meaning;" 2 — -furthermore, in that important 
writing De Genesi contra Manichaeos he takes a decided 
position against the allegorists ; and then, several years 
later, in the De Genesi ad literam, he goes over the same 
ground speaking even more emphatically than before. 
But it is a constant principle with him that Scripture is 
to be interpreted according to the analogy of the faith ; 
and so his final end in the investigation of lives and 
words of patriarchs and prophets is plainly the figure -, 
— the type. " Every part of the narrative in the pro- 
phetical books " he says " should be viewed as having 
a figurative meaning, except what serves merely as a 
frame-work for the literal or figurative predictions." 3 
He will not argue with those who will not take the 
narratives in this way : — " to dispute about such a 
difference of understanding would be as useless as to 
dispute about a difference of taste." 4 Moreover, he 
affirms that the typical or prophetical character of 
actions is not affected by their own moral quality. " In 
foretelling good, it is of no consequence whether the 
typical actions are good or bad. If it is written in red 
ink that the Ethiopians are black, or in black ink that 

1 Vid. Keble's The Mysticism attributed to the Early Fathers, p. 42 ; cf. 
Abp. Trench's S. Augustine as an Interpreter etc. p. 50 et seq. 

2 Keble, ut sup. p. 105. 3 Con. Faust, xxii. 94. 4 Id. xxii. 95. 



OLD TESTAMENT TYPICAL 33 

the Gauls are white, this circumstance does not affect 
the information which the writing conveys. No doubt 
if it was a painting instead of a writing, the wrong 
color would be a fault ; so, when human actions are 
represented for example or warning, much depends 
on whether they are good or bad ; but when actions 
are related or recorded as types, the merit or demerit 
of the agents is a matter of no importance, so long as 
there is a true typical relation between the action and 
the thing signified." x This was one conclusive way 
which he had of explaining the morality of the Old 
Testament. The Manichaeans, either in reality or in 
pretence, made a great deal of the moral difficulties of 
all that part of the Bible, and sneered contemptuously at 
the character of the Old Testament saints. And in reply 
to them, besides this reference to actions and events as 
types, S. Augustine pressed strongly the principle of 
the Divine accommodation to the circumstances and 
moral standard of earlier ages, as justifying commands 
and permissions which in a later time would be wrong. 
He affirms that the true and good God, and He alone, 
could give such commands rightly ; 2 that the order 
of time demanded such a dispensation ; 3 and asks, 
"Do they not understand how precepts and counsels 
and permissions may be changed without any incon- 
stancy in Him Who enjoins them, but by the wisdom of 
Him Who dispenses them according to the difference of 
the times ? " 4 This progressive character of revelation, 
this gradual education of men into the knowledge of 

1 Id. xxii. 83. 2 Id. xxii. 72. 3 Id. xxii. 76. 4 Id. xxii. 77. 



34 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

God, as pointed out by the great Latin Father, is a 
topic which several writers have commented upon ; and 
Canon Mozley has suggested that in this method of his 
he has indicated the true answer to objections of our 
own day against the morality of the Old Testament. 1 
It is not the only instance in which his teaching meets 
the difficulties of modern thought. 

The Manichaeans were rationalists ; their system was 
one of rationalism ; and much of what S. Augustine 
says against them upon the relations of reason and 
faith, might be wholesome medicine for the rationalism 
of our time. With him, having once accepted the 
authority of Scripture, it is a settled conviction to 
"believe because it is written." 2 He would not put 
understanding before faith, but faith before understand- 
ing. " Crede ut intelligas," was his bidding. 3 Yet he 
said truly that Catholic Christians "do not condemn 
the use of reason ; " 4 only it must keep its proper rela- 
tions, and act in its own sphere. He appears to have 
thought that in divine things it was not at first able to 
behold. "It falls back from the light of truth," he 
says ; and then, by appointment of Divine wisdom, 
"we are met by the friendly shade of authority." 5 As 
he developed this idea, later in life, as given in one of 
his letters, it stood, — " The perfection of method in 
training disciples is, that those who are weak be en- 
couraged to the utmost to enter the citadel of authority, 

1 Ruling Ideas of Early Ages, p. 272 ; and cf. Abp. Trench, ut sup. p. 40. 
2 Con. Faust, xxvi. 7. 3 Serm. xliii. 3. 4 Con. Faust, xviii. 7. 

5 De Mor. Eccles. vii. 



REASON AND AUTHORITY 35 

in order that when they have been safely placed there, 
the conflict necessary for their defence may be main- 
tained with the most strenuous use of reason. . . . 
Thus, the whole supremacy of authority and light of 
reason for regenerating and reforming the human race 
has been made to reside in the one saving Name, and 
in His one Church." 1 His treatise Deutilitate credendi y 
which was written to help a friend out of the snares of 
Manichaeism, contains a clear and full presentation of 
this whole matter of the precedence of faith to reason. 
" If they say that we are not even to believe in Christ 
unless undoubted reason shall be given us, they are not 
Christians. For this is what certain pagans say against 
us, foolishly indeed, yet not contrary to or inconsistent 
with themselves. But who can endure that those pro- 
fess to belong to Christ, who contend that they are to 
believe nothing unless they shall bring forward to fools 
most open reason concerning God ? But we see that 
He Himself . . . willed nothing before, or more strongly 
than, that He should be believed in ; whereas they with 
whom He had to do were not yet qualified to receive 
the secret things of God." 2 "It is authority alone," 
he says, " which moves fools to hasten unto wisdom. 
So long as we cannot understand pure truth, it would 
be indeed wretched to be deceived by authority, but 
surely more wretched not to be moved;" 3 — a passage 
which has been much abused, and made to teach what 
it does not teach. Surely all believers in the Church 
of Christ find in that Divine institution the meaning of 

1 Ep. cxviii. 32, 33. 2 De util. credend. 32. 3 Id. 34. 



36 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

those other words, " We must not give up all hope that 
. . . God Himself hath appointed some authority, 
whereon resting, as on a sure step, we may be lifted up 
unto God." * And because S. Augustine accepted au- 
thority, because he placed faith in order of time before 
reason, there is no good ground for the charge of certain 
recent writers, that he gave up his reason, and remained 
ever more in blind and abject submission. We cannot 
think that he regarded the authority which influenced 
him to accept Christianity and the Church as " extrinsic 
and separable from the truth of [that] Christianity." 2 
We find no proof that he considered " his volition 
forced." 3 Nor need we admit the truth of such milder 
language as that in " this earlier theology ... he suffi- 
ciently satisfied his reason while yet making the sacrifice 
of reason," 4 with its implication, — which the one who 
writes these words fully confirms, — that in his later 
thinking he made the sacrifice complete. That he be- 
came more dogmatic, and even grew in some ways more 
narrow and fettered in his thinking, cannot be denied ; 
but, with all this, we find no ground for saying that he 
more and more surrendered reason. On the other 
hand, we believe that, in harmony with certain words of 
his which we have quoted, he more and more used rea- 
son. He might hold, in such use, we claim, what ideas 
he pleased, of free-will, or predestination ; for the ques- 
tion of submission, which his opponents make so much 
of, has not to do with the almighty and inscrutable 

1 Id. 2 Owen's Evenings with the Skeptics, Vol. II. p. t8i. 3 Id. 
p. 182. 4 Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 148. 



DID HE CONTINUE A MANICHAEAN? 37 

power of God, but with the authority of the Church, 
and of forms of truth, called dogmas. 

It has been quite popular in modern times, to assert 
or to hint that S. Augustine was never free from the 
influence of Manichaeism. One says, " In spite of his 
war against the Manichaeans, he remained to the last 
unconsciously, but virtually and essentially Manichaean 
in his theory of human nature." * Another writes, "The 
real strength of Augustine was acquired, I conceive, 
through his early baptism in the Styx of Manichaeism, 
and his discovery that God must be the deliverer from 
it. I do not say that he ever shook off the distemper ; 
it came back again frequently in his battle with Pela- 
gius " etc. 2 But, admitting the unconscious influence 
which the apparent dualism of the universe may have 
continued to present to his mind, we cannot see the 
justice of any such charge. No one, we believe, who 
understands his doctrine of original sin, can truly affirm 
that by it human nature was annihilated, and made 
"only a medium for the manifestation of God or the 
devil." 3 Neander is more fair-minded. His statement 
is, that "Augustine's anthropological views have been 
very unjustly attributed to the influence of Manichae- 
ism : " 4 — and he goes on to distinguish plainly his doc- 
trine of human corruption, which " grew out of a simple 
fact of the moral consciousness," from the dualism of 
Mani's philosophy of nature. It was the Pelagians, 

1 Hedge's Atheism in Philosophy and other Essays, p. 188. 2 Maurice : 
— in his Life etc. Vol. II. p. 109. 3 Hedge, ut sup. p. 190. 4 Ch. Hist. 
Vol. II. p. 625. 



3 8 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

chiefly, who used to taunt S. Augustine with being a 
Manichaean ; and the reason was evident : perhaps the 
same reason moves those who cast the taunt now. 

S. Augustine has left writings of much importance 
in connection with Donatism. This schism had been in 
existence in Africa from the beginning of the fourth 
century. Originating in false notions of the purity of 
the Church, it carried these notions to the extreme 
of bigotry and narrowness. Early calling out the oppo- 
sition of the Empire, by refusing to yield to decisions 
given in answer to its own appeals, meeting henceforth 
with but little of conciliation, provoked by continued 
imperial repression, growing stronger by persecution, 
going to great lengths of gloomy zeal and even cruel 
fanaticism, the sect in Augustine's time had come to be 
one of large proportions and corresponding influence. 
The Donatists have been called the Puritans of Africa ; 
and the history of the two presents many parallels, in 
doctrine and practice. S. Augustine, and the African 
Church quite generally, through his influence, made 
many efforts to win them back to the Church ; and they 
succeeded to a good degree in certain sections ; but the 
schism was too deep-seated, perhaps, in the very inten- 
sity of the African nature : it was but one of the forms 
of persistent dissension in that Church, which died only 
with the extinction of the Church itself. By letters, 
and treatises, and conferences, S. Augustine strove to 
bring the Donatists to their allegiance. While firm in 
his opposition to their error, he manifests a spirit of 



THE DONA TIST SCHISM 39 

conciliation and courtesy and charity ; he entreats his 
clergy and people to show " untiring gentleness." 
"Love men, while you destroy errors," are his words : 
— " take of the truth without pride ; strive for the 
truth without cruelty; pray for those whom you refute 
and convince." l 

His teaching in this connection relates to the validity 
and efficacy of the sacraments, especially Baptism ; the 
purity of the Church ; the unity of the Church ; the sin 
of schism: — and what he writes upon these subjects 
is of permanent value. Nor would we fail to consider, 
in part for justification or explanation, in part for 
censure, his oft-quoted opinions about compulsion and 
persecution which were uttered at this time. 

S. Augustine maintains the holiness and power of 
the Church's sacraments in language not to be mis- 
understood. They are holy, because they are Christ's 
sacraments ; " holy, through Him to Whom they be- 
long," 2 and to Whom they unite those who worthily 
receive them. Their power is in Christ ; and this 
power is for good or ill, according to the worthiness or 
unworthiness of the receiver. Speaking now of Holy 
Baptism, he writes, " He Himself consecrates His sac- 
rament, — that in the recipient, either before he is 
baptized, or when he is baptized, or at some future time 
when he turns in truth to God, that very sacrament 
may be profitable to salvation, which, were he not to 
be converted, would be powerful to his destruction." 3 
" When we say that Christ baptizes, we do not mean 

1 Con. lit. Petil. i. 31. 2 Con. lit. PetiL ii. 88. 3 De Baptismo, vi. 47. 



40 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

by a visible ministry, . . . but by a hidden power in 
the Holy Spirit. . . . Nor has He now ceased to baptize; 
but He still does it, not by any ministry of the body, 
but by the invisible working of His majesty." ■ It is 
always Christ Who is here the origin, root, and head. 2 
This holiness and power, moreover, are inherent, and 
depend not upon the giver or the receiver. " When 
baptism is given in the words of the gospel, however 
great the perverseness of him through whom, or of him 
to whom it is given, the sacrament is holy in itself, on, 
account of Him Whose sacrament it is. And if any one, 
receiving it at the hands of a misguided man, yet does 
not receive the perversity of the minister, but only 
the holiness of the mystery, being closely bound to the 
unity of the Church in good faith and hope and charity, 
he receives remission of his sins, — not by the words, 
. . . but by the sacraments of the gospel flowing from 
a heavenly source. But if the recipient himself be mis- 
guided, on the one hand what is given is of no avail for 
the salvation of the misguided man ; and yet, on the 
other hand that which is received remains holy in the 
recipient, and is not renewed to him if he be brought 
to the right way." 3 Farther still, this independent 
power of the sacrament pertains to it even when ad- 
ministered outside of the unity of the Church. Holy 
Baptism belongs to Christ, — belongs to His holy Church ; 
and yet, S. Augustine teaches, it is found with those 
who are in heresy or schism. That he does not mean 
by this any bodies which have not valid orders, is plain 

1 Con. lit. Petil. iii. 59. 2 Id. i. 6. 3 De Baptismo, iv. 18. 



VALIDITY AND EFFICACY OF BAPTISM 41 

from his own words at the very beginning of the De 
Baptismo, and from what we know of the history of 
these bodies, whose bishops possessed an actual conse- 
cration, however irregular and illegal, whereby "an 
Episcopal succession went on conferring holy orders." I 
His own words are, that "he who is ordained, if he 
depart from the unity of the Church, does not lose the 
sacrament of conferring baptism," 2 which he possesses 
because he is ordained. Accordingly, those who have 
received this baptism in separation, if they return to 
the unity of the Church, are not to be re-baptized ; for, 
he says, "we act rightly, who do not dare to repudiate 
God's sacraments, even when administered in schism." 3 
This was meant to oppose the error of the Donatists, 
who, falsely claiming that the Church had not possessed 
pure orders since the time of their separation, would 
not receive any who came to them from the Church, 
without re-baptizing them. And so S. Augustine de- 
duces the general principle of the validity of the sacra- 
ment in distinction from its efficacy, — its character in 
distinction from its grace. He says that the reason 
why S. Cyprian and those of his time took the ground 
they did in favor of re-baptizing, was "from their not 
distinguishing the sacrament from the effect or use of 
the sacrament;" 4 and again, — "if you say that the 
grace of baptism is identical with baptism, then it 
exists among heretics ; but if baptism is the sacrament 
or outward sign of grace, while the grace itself is the 

1 Vid. Ch. Quart. Rev. Vol. XIX. p. 309. e De Baptismo, i. 2. 
3 Id. 4 De Baptismo, vi. I. 



42 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

abolition of sins, then the grace of baptism does not 
exist with heretics." x This grace, this remission of 
sins, constituting its true efficacy, he claims can be 
received only in unity with the Church. "Men may 
be baptized in communions severed from the Church, 
in which Christ's baptism is given and received ; but it 
will only then be of avail for the remission of sins," 
when they are "reconciled to the unity of the Church." 2 
Of the case of two, baptized without change of heart 
or life, one without and the other within the Church, 
" he is worse who is baptized without, — because he is 
without ; for the evil of division is in itself far from 
insignificant or trivial." 3 

But let none imagine that S. Augustine did not go 
farther than any outward dividing lines, even when 
they bounded the divine organization. He taught the 
deep, spiritual unity with Christ in His Church : and 
he even went so far in this, that he is by many inter- 
preted as believing in the theory of an invisible Church 
in this world. 4 He says in one place, fi Nor is it those 
only that do not belong to it [the Church], who are 
openly guilty of the manifest sacrilege of schism, but 
also those, who, being outwardly joined to its unity, are 
yet separated by a life of sin " : 5 and again, — " It does 
not follow that whosoever has the baptism of Christ is 
also certain of the remission of sins, if he has this only 
in the outward sign, and is not converted with a true 

1 Id. vii. 37. 2 Id. i. 18. 3 Id. iv. 23. 4 Vid. his explanation 
of S. John iii. 5, in De Baptismo, vi. 19; of S. Matt. vii. 24 etc. in 44, 45; 
and cf. Con. lit. Petil. ii. 178, 180, 247. 5 De Bapt. i. 14. 



SACRAMENTS NOT MAGICAL 43 

conversion of the heart." 1 As "the man who is bap- 
tized in heresy in the Name of the Holy Trinity does 
not become the temple of God unless he abandons his 
heresy ; " so " the covetous man who has been baptized 
in the same Name, does not become the temple of God 
unless he abandons his covetousness which is idola- 
try." 2 Holiness of life he deems of cardinal impor- 
tance, and dwells upon the gradual progressiveness of 
evil or of good in one's life. All this is quite enough 
to show that he did not make of Baptism that magic 
charm which some have taught he did. He goes even 
farther. Where recourse to baptism may not be had 
for want of time, he teaches that " faith and conversion 
of heart " may supply what is wanting : 3 though he 
does not say this to depreciate the sacrament, — as no 
one can intentionally do, who honors God, — but affirms, 
to the contrary, that no "perfection in the inner man" 
should induce one to "despise a sacrament which is 
applied to the body by the hands of the minister, but 
which is God's own means for working spiritually a 
mans consecration to Himself." 4 That this means may 
accomplish its end, however, it must be used as God 
would have it, not in separation but in unity. Though 
all possess true baptism who have received it anywhere 
in the Name of the Holy Trinity, without deceit, and 
with some degree of faith, 5 what they thus have, in 
separation, is only the character of baptism, not its 
grace. Augustine insists that it is the sacrament, and 

1 Id. vi. 62. 2 Id. iv. 6. 3 Id. iv. ^9. 4 Id. s Id. vii. 102 ; 
Con. lit. Petil. ii. 61. 



44 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

therefore " should be acknowledged and revered ; " T but 
that it is of no profit for remission and salvation outside 
the Church. Accordingly, he is quite consistent in 
bidding all who are without to return to unity. And 
however strict his doctrine may seem in its relation to 
all such ; of however little benefit, it would appear, he 
must have regarded their baptism — stripped of grace ; 
really their case was no worse in his mind than that of 
those baptized in the Church in insincerity. Either 
case was an abuse, a perversion of a divine gift ; an 
unlawful use of a lawful privilege. God's grace was 
held in abeyance, he taught; just as, in the case of 
insincerity, is commonly taught to-day. 

The unity for which he pleaded is thus shown to have 
been spiritual as well as external. It was external, or- 
ganic, — handed down in succession from the Apostles, 
among whom he gave the primacy to S. Peter, while he 
explicitly claimed that his was not the only Episcopal 
chair ; there must be unity also with S. James, and S. 
Cyprian; — with Jerusalem and Carthage, as well as 
with Rome ; 2 — this organic unity any who were striv- 
ing to sunder, were doing great wrong, and bringing 
sorrow to every loyal heart. "We behold with grief 
and lamentation peace broken, unity rent asunder, bap- 
tism administered a second time, and contempt poured 
on the sacraments, which are holy even when ministered 
and received by the wicked." 3 This is the root of 
the matter with S. Augustine, — that the sacraments, 

1 De Baptismo, iii. 13. 2 Id. ii. 2. Con. lit. Petil. ii. 118. 3 Ep. 
xliii. 24. 



UNITY OF THE CHURCH 45 

the unity, the authority, are Christ's. The unity of the 
Church is with him the deepest possible spiritual unity ; 
not only a oneness of believer with believer, but the 
oneness of believers with Christ, and in Christ. Can 
any question the scriptural and reasonable grounds for 
this unity, as he here puts it ? — " No one attains to 
salvation and eternal life who has not Christ for his 
Head. But no one can have Christ for a Head, who 
does not belong to His Body, which is the Church." * 
And the following statement guards with equal care 
both sides of the truth ; — " The entire Christ is the 
Head and the Body ; the Head is the Only begotten 
Son of God ; the Body is the Church. He who agrees 
not with Scripture in the doctrine concerning the Head, 
although he may stand in external communion with the 
Church, notwithstanding belongs not to her. But he 
who holds fast to all that Scripture teaches concerning 
the Head, and yet cleaves not to the unity of the 
Church, belongs not to her." 2 

A few words more must be said at this point, about S. 
Augustine's opinion of S. Cyprian. Although Cyprian 
had taken the strong ground which has been referred 
to upon re-baptizing, yet he had shown a holy spirit of 
peace and charity, in not claiming that his opinions 
and those of his local Church at Carthage should bind 
others, and in not separating himself from their com- 
munion. S. Augustine nobly extols this peaceful spirit, 
and deems it of higher worth than knowledge of the 
mystery of the sacrament, without charity? He justly 

1 De Unitate Ecclesiae, 49. 2 Id.']. 3 De Baptismo, i. 28. 



46 SAINT A UG US TINE 

affirms, also, that S. Cyprian's authority, which the 
Donatists so loudly boasted of as on their side, was 
really against them, and in favor of the Church, because 
of his very tolerance and humility and determination to 
keep unity ; while they were proud and intolerant, and 
vaunted forth the very extreme of the schismatical 
temper ; although they had, besides, the decree of a 
council J against them, and so knew and transgressed 
a law of the Church which did not exist in Cyprian's 
day. It is worthy of note, — and the point has been 
wrought out by an able writer, 2 — how strongly anti- 
papal is the conception of Church authority which S. 
Augustine here presents. To a discerning mind he 
hardly appears, in this respect, as the great fore-runner 
of the domination of the papacy, as some seem to regard 
him. He praises S. Cyprian, because, while holding 
firmly his own opinions, and, in so doing, daring to 
utterly reject the authority of the Bishop of Rome, he 
would not make the point a condition of communion 
with others, as there was no universal Church authority 
in the matter. "No one of us," — says S. Cyprian com- 
mended by S. Augustine, — "sets himself up as a bishop 
of bishops, or by tyrannical terror forces his colleagues 
to a necessity of obeying." 3 How radically different 
from all this have been the temper and action of the 
Roman Church, is too manifest to call for comment. 

This unity of the Church, so important for building 
up Christ's kingdom in the world, S. Augustine main- 

1 Eighth canon of Aries. 2 In the Chtirch Quarterly Review, vol. 
xvi. pp. 28-30. 5 De Baptismo, ii. 3. 



PURITY OF THE CHURCH 47 

tains may be kept without the sacrifice of purity. This 
is not saying that the Church is wholly pure in this 
world. Nor is it denying that, in its ideal, the Church 
is holy in Christ? — that great truth of the Creed; but 
it is an admission of the actual condition of things, an 
attempt to explain it, and to better it. The Church on 
earth includes both good and bad ; even as the net in 
the parable contains both good and bad fishes, or the 
field both wheat and tares. This primary conception 
of her condition has been represented as one which 
S. Augustine ingeniously made up and urged, merely 
as means of carrying his point against the Donatists, — 
as a lawyer holding a brief for the Church. 2 But such 
criticism is very far-fetched, brought even all the way 
from the one-sidedness of Donatist feeling, as may be 
read in the records of that time. 3 The application of 
one of the parables, it is to be observed, they could 
not deny ; that of the other 5. Augustine did not invent, 
but rather S. Cyprian.'' In the Church, then, as it is 
on earth, S. Augustine teaches, to insist on finding 
absolute purity, or even that there can be no commun- 
ion with the wicked, would be to destroy the Church. 
But, as it has continued to exist, its life must have 
been maintained, even in spite of its impurity. The good 
in it are not to sever themselves, and thus commit the 
sin of schism. " The good and faithful, certain of their 
own salvation, may continue to dwell in unity among 

1 This is Maurice's charge, — Life, etc. Vol. II. p. 167. z Continuity 
of Christian Thought, p. 152. 3 Vid. Neander, ut sup. Vol. II. p. 242. 
4 Vid. Abp. Trench on The Parables, p. 91, n. I. 



48 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

the corrupt whom it is beyond their power to punish, 
seeking to root out the sin which is in their own 
heart." s We need not be partakers of other men's 
sins, by being in communion with them. What S. 
Paul forbids, he explains, 2 is consenting to these sins. 
Wicked men may be in the Church, partaking materi- 
ally of the sacraments, while they do not belong to the 
Body of Christ: 3 yes, wicked men may administer 
these sacraments, whose holiness cannot even thus be 
polluted ; God gives the Holy Spirit in the ministry of 
wicked men ; but though through them, not from them ; 
for the grace itself is only from Himself, or through His 
saints.* But this state of things is "not for eternity, 
but only for time; nor is it spiritual, but corporal." . . . 
" Let the separation in the body be waited for till the 
end of time, faithfully, patiently, bravely." s Let no 
one, he urges, give way to individualism. " Let no one 
say, 'I will follow such an one, — for he made me a 
Christian, he baptized me ; ' — let no one that preaches 
the Name of Christ, or administers the sacrament of 
Christ, be followed in opposition to the unity of Christ' ' 5 
The Church's ideal purity will appear hereafter. " On 
earth it includes both bad and good. On earth it loses 
none but the bad ; into heaven it admits none but the 
good." 7 Thus does he present the great truths of 
the unity and the purity of the Church. With its 
organic structure handed down from the Incarnate 

1 Con. Epis. Parmeniani, iii. 12 et seq. z De Baptismo, vii. 9. 
3 Con. lit. Petil. ii. 247. 4 De Bapt. v. 28, 29. s Con. lit. Petit, iii. 4. 
6 Id. iii. 6. 7 Ep. xliii. 27. 



APPROVAL OF COMPULSION 49 

God, with its spiritual power its deepest, truest test, 
with Christ alone sin/ess its one source of grace and life, 

— may he not well say, " You are safe, who have God 
for your Father, and His Church for your mother " ? x 

S. Augustine has been much censured for his approval 
of compulsion in bringing men into the Church. He 
has been charged with favoring persecution ; and has 
been even made responsible for the cruelties of the 
Inquisition. We reluctantly admit that there is some 
truth in all this ; although we think his opponents have 
carried the matter, in certain directions, much too far. 
As regards the Donatists, it must be owned, in his 
favor, that his treatment of them for a long period was 
by methods of persuasion and argument ; that he neither 
advocated nor permitted force ; that he urged upon his 
clergy and people only peace and conciliation, — seeking 
to win a real victory over their narrowness and bigotry, 
and to gain them for the Church's unity rather than to 
transform them into hypocritical Catholics. 2 They, on 
the other hand, became increasingly violent and cruel, 

— their abominable conduct, as all history shows, far 
exceeding any thing charged against the Church. They 
went on, in their outrages, to the extent of most hein- 
ous crimes. It was the State that interfered, partly to 
carry out its laws against crime, partly to compel them 
to give up their property, to abandon their worship, and 
come into the Church. And here, as in all such cases 
since, there is a commingling of the temporal and the 

1 Con. lit. Petil. iii. 10. Compare the mis-statement of this passage in 
Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 152. 2 Ep. xciii. 17. 



50 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

spiritual, in interests, rights, and duties. The question 
becomes, — how far S. Augustine called for, approved, 
sanctioned this compulsory interference of the State ? 
He positively did approve it, he did ask for it : and it 
does not do away with this fact to know that, in the 
kindness of his own nature, he counselled, even implored 
lenity in the punishment of offenders. 1 He might have 
been justified in seeking for protection from the state 
against cruelty, violence, murder. The mad rage of 
fanaticism was aroused ; and he could see no other way 
of checking it than this. But he went on to make the 
great mistake of connecting questions of religious belief 
and worship with those of moral conduct, and to think 
compulsion right, yes, a good and wholesome thing, in 
reference to one as well as the other. Interpreting 
literally the language of the parable, " compel them to 
come in," — using the example of S. Paul, compelled to 
believe at his conversion, — "Why," he asked, " should 
not the Church compel her lost sons to return ? " 2 At 
first he would not call it persecution, which he advo- 
cated, but "punishment," or "merciful correction;" but 
soon it was "truth persecuting falsehood," or "treach- 
ery chastised with the scourge of tribulation : " 3 later, 
it became the "righteous persecution which the Church 
of Christ inflicts upon the impious, in the spirit of love, 
that she may correct, and recall from error." 4 He 
made much reference to the wholesome effect of this 
persecution, — how that so many of the reformed Dona- 

1 Ep. cxxxiii. ad Marcellinum. 2 Ep. clxxxv. 22, 23. 3 Con. lit. 
Petil. ii. passim. 4 Ep. clxxxv. 11. 



DEFENCE OF PERSECUTION 5 I 

tists were thankful that the imperial laws had been 
brought to bear against them and they had been res- 
cued, even against their will. 1 He claims that kings 
are to serve the Lord, as kings, "by preventing and 
chastising with religious severity all acts done in oppo- 
sition to the commandments of the Lord. 2 Sins against 
God are as amenable to human law as sins against men : 
— " Why," he openly asks, "when free-will is given by 
God to man, should adulteries be punished by the laws, 
and sacrilege allowed?" 3 The whole drift of this lan- 
guage is in one direction. And even when we make 
all fair allowance for sincerity of motive, and take into 
account his own mildness and gentleness of spirit, we 
can find little in his writings upon this subject which 
is not worthy of condemnation ; and with sad surprise 
we wonder if he ever imagined the extent to which his 
opinions might be used and abused. 

The Pelagian heresy called forth perhaps the most 
distinctive of S. Augustine's doctrinal teaching. The 
truths imperilled he considered were those of prime 
importance, the errors subtle and dangerous. The 
controversy was severe and long continued ; and the 
fact that here, more than anywhere else in his writings, 
Augustine appears as the Controversialist, largely ac- 
counts for both the strength and the weakness of his 
statements. 

Pelagianism, with a great deal that was true, in its 
origin and development, was mainly false in both. Its 

* id. 7, 13. 8 id. 19. 3 Id. 20. 



52 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

origin was in an exaggerated notion of human power and 
freedom, the development of which would logically do 
away with Christianity. It denied any inherited fault 
of our nature, and made sin only actual. It proclaimed 
the sufficiency of man for obeying God's command- 
ments, and denied the necessity of direct supernatural 
grace. Gaining popular esteem by its appeal to the 
innate consciousness of freedom and responsibility, and 
by its successful use of that appeal in arousing indolent 
souls to effort in the ordinary duties of life ; after all it 
could not be truly practical, but, "going upon ideas 
without considering facts," it made too little of actual 
human frailty and the power of evil habit, and so had no 
ability to meet those deeper needs which really existed, 
and for which Christianity would provide a remedy. 

S. Augustine, whose overpowering sense of the sin- 
fulness of man was but the echo of his own experience 
to the affirmations of Scripture ; to whom, in idea, 
God's power was infinite, man's strength nothing, and 
so, God's grace indispensable to enable human weak- 
ness, — was alarmed from the first at the existence in 
the Christian Church of doctrines which he considered 
struck at the foundation of Christianity. If nature 
since the Fall had no infection, if we were born as 
pure and as free to obey God as was Adam before his 
disobedience, if man could and did really make the first 
beginning in turning to God, if the will were thus pow- 
erful, if there were no absolute need of internal Divine 
assistance, if the life could thus begin and continue 
acceptable, — wh^re was Christianity ? was it not 



TRUTH AND ERROR OF PELAGIANISM 53 

practically useless ? But conscience, experience, obser- 
vation contradicted this, and confirmed the testimony 
of God's Word. 

To enter upon any detailed history of the Pelagian 
controversy would be beyond the scope of this essay. 
It affected all Christendom : through its chief leaders, 
Augustine on the one side, Pelagius, Celestius, and 
Julian on the other, its doctrines, in their more or less 
extended application, came before many Bishops and 
Councils, and were approved or disapproved ; the con- 
clusion being that the Pelagian opinions were con- 
demned by the Church in both East and West. 1 Of 
the issues of the controversy, and the consequent value 
of the Church's decision, we may form an opinion, if 
we will but consider, as Canon Bright says, " what 
effect e.g. the denial of real grace would have on the 
principle of sacraments ; or what would be left of the 
practical religion of our Prayer-Book, after it had been 
revised in the interests of Pelagianism." 2 

The teachings of S. Augustine in this connection 
have been loudly praised and loudly blamed. We have 
for them, as a whole, neither praise nor blame unquali- 
fied. A distinction may be made among them. Some 
of these doctrines were not the novelties which they 
are mistakenly affirmed to have been ; others, truly, 
were but the developments of his own thought from 
doctrines which had the authority of tradition. 3 More- 
over, as a guide, in our estimate of them all, we may 

1 Carthage, a.d. 418: Third General Council, at Ephesus, a.d. 431. 
2 Anti-Pelagian Treatises, etc. Introd. p. xiv. 3 Id. p. li. 



54 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

readily observe that they tend to become increasingly 
intense, unconditioned, arbitrary, one-sided. And herein 
they illustrate a principle ; for even, if we do not, as 
many would not, find mental difficulty in the theory of 
absolute predestination, or of irresistible grace, there is 
still this to be said, that, in the orderings of Divine 
providence, in the working of the will of God in the 
hearts of men, there is another side of the truth. It is 
this other side of the truth, which, in the intensity of 
some of his doctrinal statements relating to Pelagian- 
ism, he loses ; and whether it arise from the pressure 
of controversy, or from continual meditation upon the 
one aspect of truth which seems to him most necessary, 
he thereby does present doctrine which is defective, 
imperfect, individualized, rather than whole, catholic, 
comprehensive. And it is just those portions of his 
doctrine which have been taken up and elaborated, 
pushed to farthest extremes, and perhaps given a 
really forced interpretation, by founders of sects ; 
while the body of his teaching is the heritage and the 
blessing of the entire Church. 

S. Augustine met the self-sufficiency of Pelagianism, 
in part, by his teaching concerning original sin. This 
doctrine the Pelagians denied ; they held that our only 
connection with Adam's sin was in the imitation of it, 
and called Augustine's doctrine a novelty. But, while 
the precise expression may have originated with him, 1 
the doctrine itself, he rightly claims, he did not devise, 
but it belonged to the Catholic faith from ancient 

1 Ad Simplic lantern, i. I. 



ORIGINAL SIN 55 

times I and had been always guarded as part of that 
faith ; 2 and in more than one of his treatises 3 he cites 
many of the Fathers of East and West as maintainers 
of it. The principal Scriptural authority to which he 
appeals is that of Rom. v. 12; where, in spite of the 
generally considered mistranslation of icp <S, "in whom," 
— the thought of his doctrine, (" omnes ille unus homo 
fuerunt " 4 ) is plainly contained in the uwres yfxaprov. 
He had what he conceived to be an unanswerable prac- 
tical argument in the universal custom of Infant Bap- 
tism in the Church : s and it is an insinuation which 
needs proof, that only from Augustine's time and be- 
cause of his teaching in reference to original sin, Infant 
Baptism began to be the general practice. 6 The bap- 
tism of infants, he says, cannot be for remission of 
actual sins, — and yet, it is for remission of sin, — 
therefore it can be only for that of original sin. " In- 
asmuch as infants are not held bound by any sins of 
their actual life, it is the guilt of original sin which is 
healed in them by the grace of Him Who saves them 
by the laver of regeneration." 7 This original sin, he 
teaches, subjects all the unbaptized to condemnation ; 
and accordingly they who so die are not believed to be 
saved. The most forbidding part of S. Augustine's 
teaching is that concerning the eternal punishment of 
the heathen, who had no opportunity, and of infants 
dying unbaptized. 

1 De nupt. et concupisc. ii. 25. 2 De peccat. meritis, iii. 14. 

3 Especially in the Con. Julianum. 4 De nupt. etc. ii. 15. s De 
pecc. mer. etc. i. 39. Cf. De Bapt. parvul. i. 10. 6 Continuity of Chris- 
tian Thought, p. 160. 7 De pecc. mer. etc. i. 24. 



5 6 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

But what, more definitely, does he make this original 
sin to be ? It is that taint, or defect, or flaw * which 
our nature inherits from Adam. " We are in such a 
condition, because, by reason of his preceding sin, we 
are born in sinful flesh." 2 He, the head of the race, 
having disobeyed, and thereby incurred guilt, has, by 
the very law of transmission, made his descendants 
sharers in that guilt. 3 And it is even more than a law 
of transmission which is in exercise ; for Adam was the 
divinely appointed head of the race, in whom the race 
was on trial. As he says elsewhere, — " We all were 
in that one man, for we all were that one man." 4 This 
original sin need not mean a literal imputation of 
Adam's sins to us, although some have so interpreted 
Augustine's teaching ; but a condition which, by in- 
heritance, brings to us the consequences of his act 
from whom we inherit. " Through the sin of the 
first man, which issued from his free-will, our nature 
became vitiated and ruined ; and nothing ever came 
to its succor but God's grace alone, through Him Who 
is the Mediator," etc. 5 Again, " Having been born 
after Adam in the flesh, they have contracted, from 

1 De nupt. etc. ii. 49. 2 De pecc. merit, i. 68. 

3 In considering this law of descent by natural generation, Augustine 
enters upon the question of the origin of the soul, whether according to 
traducianism transmitted from parents to children, or according to cre- 
atianism by individual creation at each birth. He cannot decide in favor 
of either, and thinks the question not important, but inclines towards the 
latter, — one of many instances showing his candor, as the other theory 
would more manifestly agree with his doctrine. 

4 De Civ. Dei, xiii. 14. s De Grat. Chr. i. 55. 



SOURCE AND EXTENT OF THE EVIL $? 

their very birth, the contagion of the primeval death." ■ 
These passages are specimens of very many which 
exist in his works, and perhaps they show sufficiently 
what he believed original sin to be. 

Certain inquiries suggest themselves. As to the 
source of this evil which we necessarily inherit, — is 
God made the Author of it ? S. Augustine emphati- 
cally says, No. Human nature, as created in Adam, 
was good. Our nature, as such, has no evil in it. 
Adam possessed, in that nature, a perfect righteous- 
ness, the gift of supernatural grace, and this by 
supernatural grace he might have retained. 2 When 
he sinned, it was by his own free-will, and accordingly 
of this sin God must not be made the author. Evil 
thus arose out of good, it must be owned ; as originally 
it did when a holy angel became the devil ; but God 
was not its author. It sprang not from the supreme 
good which is His nature, but from that good which 
He created out of nothing. 3 Nor did Augustine there- 
by take refuge in Manichaeism ; for the devil was not 
an original principle of evil, but was at first a good 
nature, made by the one good God. Another inquiry 
arises, as to the extent of this evil of original sin. He 
says our nature became "vitiated and ruined;" but, 
strong as this language is, or any other that can be 
quoted from him on this topic, we cannot discover it to 
be his teaching that thereby "the traces of the divine 
image in human nature were destroyed ; " or that " hu- 

1 De pecc. merit, iii. 10. 2 De corrept. et grat. 31. 3 De nupt. etc. 
ii. 48, 50. 



5 8 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

manity is absolutely separated from God." x Let us 
read what he says: — " God's image has not been so 
completely erased in the soul of man by the stain of 
earthly affections, as to have left remaining there no 
merest lineaments of it." . . . "What was impressed 
on their hearts when they were created in the image 
of God, has not been wholly blotted out." 2 Again, 
" the blessing " [of creation] — {creation then is a 
blessing) — " has not been eliminated out of our ex- 
cellent nature by a fault which puts us under condem- 
nation. . . . Whatever sins men commit," (and cer- 
tainly actual sins are worse than original sin) — " these 
defects of 'character do not eliminate his manhood from 
man ; nay, God's good workmanship continues still, 
however evil be the deeds of the impious." 3 In the 
De Trinitate> (and in one of the closing books, which 
accordingly must have been written at the very time 
when he was in the heat of the Pelagian controversy,) 
he has very explicit words about the image of God 
in man, claiming that "this image, however worn out 
and defaced, still remains;" moreover, this "weak and 
erring mind, by this image of God within itself has 
such power as to be able to cleave to Him Whose 
image it is, to understand and behold God;" 4 — words 
by which he did not intend to deny the need of 
God's grace, but which show how highly he re- 
garded human freedom under Divine grace, even in 
the initiative act of turning to God. Furthermore, if 

1 Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 157. 2 De Sp. et lit. 48. 

3 De pecc. orig. ii. 46. 4 De Trin. xiv. 6, 11, 20. 



GOD'S IMAGE NOT DESTROYED 59 

in his teaching of original sin, " humanity is absolutely 
separated from God," where could he have thought 
there would be any point of contact or recovery for our 
race, any more than for the fallen angels ? And so the 
one who makes this statement can justify it only by the 
further assertion that Augustine is so deeply interested 
in establishing his position of the condemnation of the 
race, that " the redemption of the world by Christ in- 
evitably assumes a subordinate place, and is practically 
denied ; " " — that he is guilty of such " depreciation of 
Christ, that deism is the tacit assumption of the Church 
on which its institutions rest." 2 S. Augustine denying 
the redemption of Christ ! S. Augustine a deist ! Such 
an attack needs no defence but to ask all to read his 
writings with unprejudiced mind. 

In the depth of the ruin which he believed the sin 
of Adam had brought upon the race, he never fails to 
recognize the mercy of God, following after man with 
every inducement of fear and of love, to bid him return 
to Him and be saved. But man has no power of him- 
self to return. Not only has he no merit, whereby he 
can please God in doing good works, but he cannot 
begin to believe and obey, of himself. He must have 
this internal, supernatural power imparted, to inspire, 
to urge, to aid. It must "prevent and follow" him ; it 
must be constantly with him. And this power is 
Grace, in the Augustinian teaching. Shall any one 
presume to say, that there is here a " degradation of 
Christian theology?" — that " Christ . . . gives way, in 

1 Contimiity 0/ Christian Thought, p. 157. 2 Id. p. 171. 



60 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

the system of Augustine, to an impersonal thing or sub- 
stance which is known as grace ? " l Where, then, we 
ask, is the presence of Christ in the inspired teaching 
of S. Paul? Is "grace" there only "an impersonal 
thing or substance," whose idea is to displace Christ 
in the heart ? Grace is, indeed, a theological term ; 
but its meaning reaches much farther than to the dry 
shell of dogma which sceptics and semi-sceptics talk 
about. It has been well denned, as "a force in the 
spiritual order, — not simply God's unmerited kindness 
in the abstract, but such kindness in action, as a move- 
ment of His Spirit within the soul, resulting from the 
Incarnation, and imparting to the will and the affections 
a new capacity of obedience and love." 2 And this it 
is in S. Augustine's teaching, herein carefully agreeing 
with Scripture and tradition. 

The Pelagians were willing to call by that term the 
powers of nature originally conferred on man, and which, 
they taught, he had still in exercise ; or they might 
make it another expression for the moral law, or the 
gift of forgiveness, or the following of Christ's ex- 
ample. And so they had a great deal of use, more or 
less specious, of the word grace. But they never came 
to own it as that internal, Divine power, which was 
necessary for holiness. Accordingly they and S. Augus- 
tine were not speaking of the same thing at all ; and 
he is careful to say so repeatedly. He means by it that 
merciful power of God acting to restore man's fallen 
nature. Grace does not really disparage nature, he 

1 Continuity etc. p. 162. 2 Canon Bright's Introduction, ut sup. p. x. 



HIS DOCTRINE OF GRACE 6 1 

says : — it " liberates and controls nature ; " ■ it is not 
according to merit, or it would not be grace ; it is free, 
or it would not be grace ; it is set in contrast to the law, 
yet it enables to keep the law ; grace works with us as 
well as in us ; with our will, — establishing free-will ; 
all grace is in Christ, by Whom it is given in many ways, 
emphatically in the Holy Sacraments ; grace gradually 
accomplishes perfection in holiness, and brings us to 
the fruition of everlasting life. Our grace, he teaches, 
is an even greater gift than that bestowed upon Adam ; 
for ours is efficacious, — yes, as he may be interpreted, 
even irresistible and indefectible. And now, if we add 
the relation of predestination and perseverance, in his 
system of doctrine, to this grace, — that predestination 
prepares for grace ; and that this grace, by God's right- 
eous and secret counsels, is not given to all alike, in 
fact is given to one and not given to another, for some 
never begin, and some do not finish the Christian course, 
— perhaps we shall have traced a tolerably clear out- 
line of the Augustinian teaching on this great subject. 
Even in its outline it indicates bright lights and deep 
shadows ; a mixture of Catholic truth and individual 
error; the error being in going so far with one side 
of truth as not to make known the other side ; in being 
driven on by logic ; in ignoring comprehensiveness, and 
being bound to a system ; in forgetting authority, and 
making an excessive use of human reason. A few quota- 
tions may best illustrate all this. — " This grace of Christ 
... is not bestowed for any merits, but is given freely, 

1 Retract, ii. 43. 



62 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

on account of which it is also called grace." x "The law 
was given in order that grace might be sought ; grace 
was given in order that the law might be fulfilled." 2 
"Does not the whole scope amount to this, that the 
letter which forbids sin fails to give man life, but rather 
killeth by increasing concupiscence and aggravating our 
sinfulness by transgression, unless indeed grace liberates 
us by the law of faith which is in Christ Jesus, when 
His love is ' shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy 
Ghost which is given to us ' ? " 3 " It is grace which 
helps any man to be a doer of the law ; and without this 
grace, he who places himself under the law will be a 
hearer of the law and nothing else." 4 "God is said to 
be our Helper ; but nobody can be helped who does not 
make some effort of his own accord. For God does not 
work our salvation in us as if we were mere stones, 
without sensibility, or creatures in whose nature He 
had placed neither reason nor will. Why, however, He 
helps one man, but not another, or why one man so 
much, and another not to the same extent, or why one 
man in one way, and another in another way, — are 
points which He reserves to Himself according to the 
method of His own most secret judgment, and to the 
excellency of His power." 5 "No man is assisted [by 
God], unless he also himself does something ; assisted, 
however, he is, if he prays, if he believes, if he is 
'called according to God's purpose.'" . . . "This God's 
grace does, in cooperation with ourselves, through Jesus 

1 De nat. et grat. 4. 2 De Sp. et lit. 34. 3 Id. 25. 4 De grat. 
et lib. arbit. 24. s De pecc. merit, ii. 6. 



GRACE WORKING WITH THE WILL 63 

Christ our Lord, as well by commandments, sacraments, 
examples, as by His Holy Spirit also, through Whom 
there is latently shed abroad in our hearts that love which 
maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot 
be uttered, until health and salvation be perfected in us, 
and God be manifested to us as He will be seen in His 
eternal truth." r " He begins His influence by working 
hi us that we may have the will, and completes it by 
working with us when we have the will " 2 (the lan- 
guage of our Tenth Article). " Every man's righteous- 
ness must be attributed to the operation of God, al- 
though not taking place without the cooperation of 
man's will." 3 " Our merits have their crown of reward ; 
but our merits are the gift of God ; " 4 — the same sen- 
timent as is found in the well known prayer of the Con- 
fessions, " Give what Thou commandest, and command 
what Thou wilt " (x. 40), or in the acknowledgment, 
" My good deeds are Thy institutions and Thy gifts " 
(x. 5), or in the Epistle to Sextus, " When God crowns 
our merits, He only crowns His own gifts." s "Do we 
by grace make void man's freedom of will? God for- 
bid ! We rather establish that faculty. For as the law 
is not weakened or cancelled by faith, neither is free- 
will by grace." 6 "If there is no grace of God, how 
does He save the world ? and if there is no free-will, 
how does He judge the world ? " 7 " By faith comes the 
acquisition of grace to resist sin ; by grace the soul 

1 De perfec.justit. 43. 2 De Grat. et lib. arbit. 33. 3 De Spir. et 
lit. 7. 4 De gest. Pelag. 35. 5 Ep. cxciv. 19. 6 De Spir. et lit. 52. 
7 Ep. ccxiv. 2. 



64 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

procures healing from the disease of sin ; by the health 
of the soul liberty is given to the will ; from this free- 
dom of the will arises the love of righteousness ; and 
from the love of righteousness proceeds the accomplish- 
ment of the law. . . . How is it, then, that miserable 
men dare to be proud, either of their free-will, before 
they have liberty, or of their own strength, if they have 
been liberated ? " l This grace is all in Christ, and from 
Him. This Mediator, "even previous to His coming in 
the flesh, all along delivered the ancient members of His 
Body by their faith in His incarnation ; " 2 and " with- 
out faith in His incarnation, and death, and resurrection, 
the Christian verity unhesitatingly declares that the 
ancient saints could not possibly have been cleansed 
from sin, so as to have become holy, and justified by the 
grace of God." 3 "If God willed not that man should 
be without sin, He would not have sent His Son, with- 
out sin, to heal men of their sins." 4 "There is no re- 
conciliation except by the remission of sins, through the 
grace alone of the most merciful Saviour, — through the 
only sacrifice of the most veritable Priest." 5 " In Him 
Who is our Head [is] the very fountain of grace, whence, 
according to the measure of every man, He diffuses 
Himself through all His members. It is by that grace 
that every man from the beginning of his faith becomes 
a Christian, by which grace that one Man from His be- 
ginning became Christ ; the former also is born again 
by the same Spirit of which the latter was born." 6 

1 De Spir. et lit. 52. 2 De pecc. orig. 37. 3 De pecc. orig. 28. 

* De perfec.justit. 7. 5 De pecc. merit, i. 56. 6 De praedest.sanct. 13. 



GRACE IN THE SACRAMENTS 65 

" The very sacraments of the holy Church show plainly 
enough that infants . . . are delivered from the bondage 
of the devil through the grace of Christ." * "Through 
the grace of that holy laver which we have put within 
our reach, advances are even now made by us towards 
the blessed consummation of perfection." 2 Although 
absolute perfection (he believed) might be, in theory, 
possible, — and "it must not by any means be said that 
with God there is no possibility whereby the will of man 
can be assisted to such a degree, that there can be ac- 
complished in every respect, even now, in a man, not 
that righteousness only which is of faith, but that also 
in accordance with which we shall by and by have to 
live for ever in the very vision of God;" — yet, they 
who ask why this is not actually so now, forget "the 
fact that they are human." 3 " There is now a training 
carried on in growing [Christians], and there will be by 
all means a completion made, after the conflict with 
death is spent." 4 " The same regeneration which now 
sanctifies even our outer man, 5 and renews our spirit, so 
that all our past sins are remitted, will by and by also 
operate, as might be expected, to the renewal to eternal 
life of that very flesh." 6 " By this laver of regeneration 
and word of sanctification all the evils of regenerate 
men of whatever kind are cleansed and healed, — not 
the sins only which are all now remitted in baptism, but 
those also which after baptism are committed by human 

1 De pecc. orig. 45. 2 De pecc. orig. 44. 3 De Spir. et lit. 66. 
4 De perfec. justit. 16. s De nupt. et concupis. i. 20. 6 De pecc. 
orig. 44. 



66 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

ignorance and frailty;" 1 — i.e. (as he more fully de- 
clares) " not only all the sins, but all the ills of men of 
whatever kind so ever, are in course of removal by the 
sanctification of that Christian laver whereby Christ 
cleanses His Church." 2 And this grace of Baptism is 
accompanied by that of the Eucharist ; and even to 
infants is this further grace given ; for, although S. 
Augustine seems to teach in some places that their in- 
corporation into Christ is enough to make them par- 
takers of His Body and Blood, the receiving of the 
Eucharist also is made generally necessary, (and herein 
he only follows the teaching of the Greek Church) in 
such passages as this, — " Reconciliation through Christ 
is in the laver of regeneration, and in the Flesh and 
Blood of Christ, without which not even infants can 

have life in themselves." 3 "Did not Adam," asks 

S. Augustine, " have the grace of God ? Yes, truly, he 
had it largely, but of a different kind. He was placed 
in the midst of benefits which he had received from the 
goodness of his Creator ; for he had not procured those 
benefits by his own deservings ; in which benefits he 
suffered absolutely no evil." 4 "God did not will even 
him to be without His grace, which He left in his free- 
choice. . . . Such was the nature of the aid, that he 
could forsake it when he would, and could continue in 
it when he would : but not such that he could be made 

1 De nupt. etc. i. 38. 2 Id. 39. 

3 Con. duas literas etc. iv. 8. Cf . ii. 7, and iv. 4. The fuller reference to 
S. Augustine's teaching concerning the grace of the Eucharist, as given 
in other writings, is reserved for a distinct topic. 

4 De correp. et grat. 29. 



GRACE INVINCIBLE 67 

to will his continuance. This first is the grace which 
was given to the first Adam ; but more powerful than 
this is that in the second Adam. For the first is that 
whereby it is effected that a man may have righteous- 
ness if he will ; the second can do more than this, since 
by it it is even effected that he will, and wills so much, 
and loves with such ardor, that by the will of the Spirit 
he overcomes the will of the flesh." I " To the first man 
. . . was given the aid of perseverance ; not that by 
it it might come to pass that he should persevere, but 
because without it he could not of free-will persevere. 
But now, to the saints predestinated by God's grace, 
... it is not only that without that gift they cannot per- 
severe, but . . . that by means of this gift they cannot 
help persevering" * So he concludes "therefore aid was 
brought to the infirmity of human will, so that it might 
be unchangeably and invincibly influenced by Divine 
grace ; and thus, although weak, it still might not fail, 
nor be overcome by any adversity." z — "God's predes- 
tination in good is the preparation of grace ; which 
grace is actually the endowment itself, — the effect of 
that very predestination." 4 " 'But why,' says one, 'is 
not the grace of God given according to man's merits ? ' 
I answer, 'Because God is merciful.' 'Why, then,' it is 
asked, ' is it not given to all ? ' And here I reply, ' Be- 
cause God is a Judge.' And thus grace is given by Him 
freely ; and by His righteous judgment it is shown in 
some, what grace confers on those to whom it is given." s 

1 Id. 31. 2 Id. 34. 3 Id. 38. 4 De praedest. sand. 19. 

5 De don. persev. 16. 



68 SAINT A UG USTINE 

" If you ask, « Why will He punish me rather than an- 
other, or deliver him rather than me?' I confess that 
I can find no answer to make." 1 "Is there unright- 
eousness with God ? Away with the thought ! But 
His ways are past finding out. Therefore let us be- 
lieve in His mercy in the case of those who are de- 
livered, and in His truth in the case of those who are 
punished, without any hesitation ; and let us not en- 
deavor to look into that which is inscrutable, nor to 
trace that which cannot be found out." 2 " From all 
which it is shown with sufficient clearness that the 
grace of God, which both begins a man's faith and 
enables it to persevere, is not given in respect of our 
merits, but according to His own most secret, and at 
the same time most righteous, wise, and beneficent will. 
. . . We therefore will, but God worketh in us to will 
also. We therefore work, but God worketh in us to 
work also for His good pleasure." 3 

The question of free-will is strictly a philosophical 
one ; yet, as it is presented in S. Augustine's teachings, 
it has so important a relation to other questions, that, 
while we do not profess to enter into it with any degree 
of minuteness, we are not permitted to pass it by. Did 
S. Augustine teach free-will '? Yes ; absolutely, in refer- 
ence to man before the Fall. This teaching comes out 
clearly in his earlier writings, wherein, as we have 
already hinted, we think it quite probable that he also 
meant to teach this absolute freedom in man fallen. 
But in these later works, — emphatically in the Anti- 

1 De don.persev. 18. 2 Id. 25. 3 Id. 33. 



THREE-FOLD SENSE OF FREEDOM 69 

Pelagian writings, under the pressure of controversy, 
he certainly propounds a different theory in reference 
to the present condition of the race. Some have ven- 
tured to call this teaching that of a genuine freedom. 
Poujoulat affirms that Augustine teaches the Catholic 
doctrine to be "not at all the destruction of free-will, 
but its profound modification ; " and says, " so far is 
free-will from being destroyed in sinful man [according 
to Augustine], it is this free-will which determines his 
sinfulness" l a statement which does not go very deep. 
Many other Roman Catholic writers have strongly 
maintained a similar position, and upon like grounds, — 
notably, perhaps, a thoughtful critic of Canon Mozley's 
Augnstinian Doctrine of Predestination, in the fortieth 
volume of the Dublin Review. Julius Miiller, in his 
Christian Doctrine of Sin, distinguishes a three-fold 
sense of S. Augustine's use of the term freedom, — 
(1) that of absolute power of choice between good and 
evil, as belonging originally to the first man ; (2) that 
spontaneity essentially belonging to the human will, 
which marks man's present condition ; wherein, though 
he be under the power of necessity, he is free from 
constraint ; and (3) that highest freedom, which, begin- 
ning in the present condition, by the power of grace, 
can be perfect only in the future life, when it will be 
impossible to sin. 2 Canon Mozley, in the work above 
referred to, very fully treats of Free- Will as held by 
S. Augustine to belong to fallen man ; and concludes, 

1 Histoire de S. Angustin, III. p. 125. 2 Vol. II. p. 35. (Edinb. 

translation.) 



yo SAINT AUGUSTINE 

by much reasoning, and from many references, that it 
means only the possession of a will; that in part it does 
not come up to the received doctrine of free-will, — the 
will as a self -determining power, — and in part opposes 
it. 1 

We have already given several passages in which S. 
Augustine speaks of free-will in its relations to grace. 
His teaching may further appear in what follows. His 
theory, in few words, is this, — that through the Fall 
man lost his primal liberty and the grace which bestowed 
it : he is accordingly free only in the direction of sin, 
until the grace of Christ sets him free. And yet he 
may have this grace always, in answer to prayer, and 
in ordinances of the Church ; so human responsibility 
is guarded, while his own consciousness of practical 
freedom is answer enough to the insinuations of fatal- 
ism. That such a theory teaches the libertas indiffe- 
rentiae can hardly be averred ; that it may be a higher 
and truer theory cannot be denied. "Which of us 
can say," he writes, "that by the sin of the first man 
free-will perished from the human race ? Through sin 
liberty indeed perished, but it was that liberty which 
was in Paradise, — of having a full righteousness with 
immortality, on account of which loss human nature is 
without divine grace." . . . But "free-will did not so 
far perish in the sinner but that by it all sin ; . . . they 
will what pleases them. Whence also the Apostle says, 
* When ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from 
righteousness.' . . . They are not, then, free from right- 

1 PP- 195—232, (third edition.) 



HIS DOCTRINE OF FREE-WILL yi 

eousness except by the choice of the will, but they do 
not become free from sin save by the grace of the 
Saviour." ' He puts very strongly the necessity which 
"a penal viciousness produced out of the original lib- 
erty." "Vanquished by the sin into which it fell by 
the bent of its will, nature has lost its liberty. . . . 
Because the will turned to sinning, the hard necessity 
of possessing sin pursued the sinner." 2 So now "the 
captive will cannot breathe into a wholesome liberty 
save by God's grace." 3 Free-will "is of force for sin- 
ning in men subjected to the devil ; while it is not of 
avail for pious living, unless made free by God's grace." 4 
Accordingly, "he who falls, falls by his own will, and 
he who stands, stands by God's will." 5 Grace "changes 
the will from bad to good, and assists it when good." 6 
Yet "it is not to be for a moment supposed, because 
S. Paul said ' it is God that worketh in you ' etc., that 
he meant to do away with the liberty of the will. If 
this had been his meaning, he would not have said just 
before, 'Work out your own salvation'" etc. 7 "What 
need for further question?" he writes, "since we 
call that power, where to the will is joined the ability 
to do. That is in a man's power, which he does if he 
wills, and if he does not will, does not do." 8 (Quod si 

1 Con. dims literas, etc. i. 5. 

2 De perfec. justit. 9. Cf. the strong language in the Enchiridion, 
xxx. — " It was by the evil use of his free-will that man destroyed both 
it and himself." 

3 Con. duas literas, etc. iv. 3. 4 Id. ii. 9. s De don. 
persev. 19. 6 De grat. et lib. arbit. 41. 7 Id. 21. 8 De Spir. 
et lit. 53. 



72 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

vnlt, facit, si non vult, non facit.) Again, — "what is 
believing, but agreeing to the truth of what is asserted ? 
But consent proves the possession of will, (volentis 
est;) — faith, therefore, is in our own power' 1 "To 
yield our consent, or to withhold it, . . . is the function 
of our own will." 2 And this is true, he says, however 
much God influence us, externally or internally. Prayer, 
too, proves resistance to sin possible. " Whatever may 
be the cause [of sin], it may be resisted. Plainly it 
may. For on this account we pray for help, saying 
1 Lead us not into temptation.' This help we should 
not ask, if we believed that resistance were quite im- 
possible." 3 So S. Augustine would bring his readers 
to the conclusion that the Pelagians " do not maintain 
free-will by purifying it, but demolish it by exaggerating 
it." 4 The practical question is, "What the ability 
of man's will can do, when assisted by the grace of 
God." s And here, God does not command impossibili- 
ties. "Nor is any one," he says, "forced by God's 
power unwillingly, either into evil or good ; but when 
God forsakes a man, he deservedly goes to evil, and 
when God assists, without deserving he is converted to 
good. For a man is not good if he is unwilling, but 
by the grace of God he is even assisted to the point of 
being willing."* 3 "Who is drawn, if he was already 
willing ? And yet no man comes unless he is willing. 
Therefore he is drawn in wondrous ways to will, by 

1 De Spir. et lit. 54. 2 Id. 60. 3 De. nat. et grat. 80. 4 Con. 
duas literas etc. i. 8. s De nat. et grat. 49. 6 Con. duas literas 
etc. i. 36. 



PREDESTINA TION 73 

Him Who knows how to work within the very hearts 
of men." x 

The last two complete treatises of S. Augustine, in 
this great controversy, have to do with Predestination and 
Perseverajice. Election is of God's mercy, he teaches ; 
and God's ways are unsearchable. Nor is it any con- 
tradiction, "that grace is exceedingly secret." 2 God 
" has mercy, when He gives good things. He hardens, 
when He recompenses what is deserved." 3 Predestina- 
tion is but a particularizing of God's foreknowledge. 4 
"This is the predestination of the saints, — nothing 
else ; viz. the foreknowledge and the preparation of God's 
kindnesses, whereby they are most certainly delivered, 
whoever they are that are delivered." 5 Cur Lord, in 
His Incarnation, he regards as the grandest instance of 
predestination. It was "that same predestination of 
the saints which most especially shone forth in [Him] 
the Saint of saints." 6 This predestination is abso- 
lute. God chooses men that they may be believers, not 
because they are already so »,7 nor because He foresees they 
will be so ; 8 nor is anyone to be judged according to 
what he might have done, if he had lived longer. 9 The 
statement grows even more intense : " it did not do 
[the Jews] any good that they were able to believe, be- 
cause they were not predestinated by Him Whose judg- 
ments are inscrutable, and His ways past finding out. 
Neither would it have been a hindrance to them that 

1 Con. duas literas etc. i. yj. 2 De praedest. sand. 13. 3 Id. 14. 
4 Id. 19. De don. persev. 41. s De don. persev. 15, 35. b De praedest. 
sand. 31. 7 Id. 34. 8 Id. 37. 9 Id. 24. 



74 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

they could not believe, if they had been so predestinated, 
as that God should illumine their blind eyes " l etc. 
And " if, on the hearing of this, some should be turned 
to torpor and sloth, and from striving, should go head- 
long to lust after their own desires, is it therefore to be 
accounted that what has been said about the foreknowl- 
edge of God is false ? " 2 It was at this period that he 
could allow himself to interpret " Who will have all 
men to be saved " (i Tim. ii. 4), as meaning only that 
"no man is saved unless God wills his salvation ; " 3 — 
"all men" meaning "all classes of men," or "every 

race of men." We are to pray for perseverance, for 

ourselves and others, — for it is God's gift. The Lord's 
prayer, he explains, is pre-eminently the saints' prayer 
for perseverance. 4 Even they who do not persevere may 
have been receivers of grace. Those, he says, " must 
be called Christ's disciples and God's children, whom, 
being regenerated, we see to live piously ; but they are 
then truly what they are called, if they shall abide in 
that on account of which they are so called." 5 Predes- 
tination " must be preached," for it bids men glory in 
the Lord ; and it need not discourage, any more than 
preaching God's gifts need discourage obedience. 6 Yet, 
it is to be proclaimed with great discretion, implying 
need of action, and the reward promised, and making 
general application of the truth, and speaking to all 
present as if they might be receivers of grace. 7 And, 

1 De don. persev. 35. 2 Id. 38. 3 Enchirid. ciii. Cf. De correp. et 
grat. 44. A De don. persev. 3. s De correp. et grat. 22. 6 De don. 
persev. 50, 51. 7 Id. 57-61. 



PERSEVERANCE 75 

as no one can be certain of eternal life until death, he 

again more strenuously urges the duty of prayer. 1 

We may not pass over his allusion, in one of the closing 
chapters of the treatise De dono perseverantiae, to the 
pressure which the controversy has brought to bear 
upon him, — how that necessity has compelled him to 
"more carefully and laboriously defend the sacred 
Scriptures, because of these special heresies." For 
"the Pelagians say that God's grace is given according 
to our merits ; and what else is this than an absolute 
denial of grace ?" 2 

In all these writings of S. Augustine perhaps the 
greater part of his reasoning may be admitted, and 
that too without calling it " the seductive glamour of 
his dialectic," 3 which is going to ensnare us and cap- 
tivate us : and if we own that great principle of the 
other side of truth, most of his conclusions upon these 
majestic themes need not surprise us, if we are think- 
ing people, who have ever met speculative difficulties. 
To some there may be help towards the balancing of 
the Divine and the human relations of these deep 
mysteries in his own words in the De Civitate Dei, — 
words more calm and quiet and spiritually devout, more 
like himself. " It does not follow, that, though there is 
for God a certain order of all causes, there must there- 
fore be nothing depending on the free exercise of our 
own wills, for our wills themselves are included in that 
order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced 
by His foreknowledge, — for human wills are also causes 
1 Id. 62, 63. 2 Id. 53. 3 Owen. 



?6 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

of human actions ; and He Who foreknew all the 
causes of things would certainly among those causes 
not have been ignorant of our wills." . . . " Neither let 
us be afraid, lest, after all, we do not do by will that 
which we do by will, because He Whose foreknowledge 
is infallible foreknew that we would do it." x We need 
not " have any dread of necessity taking away the free- 
dom of our will." . . . "We are by no means com- 
pelled, retaining the prescience of God, to take away 
the freedom of the will, or retaining the freedom of the 
will, to deny that He is prescient of future things, 
which is impious. But we embrace both. We faith- 
fully and sincerely confess both. The former, that we 
may believe well ; the latter, that we may live well. 
For he lives ill who does not believe well concerning 
God." 2 

These last words of his form a fitting transition to 
what we wish to say concerning certain other important 
teaching of S. Augustine, not directly connected with 
either of the three great controversies in which he was 
engaged. It would be leaving an essential part of our 
subject untouched, did we not at least draw attention 
to these other points of his teaching. And however ob- 
scure, or severe, or intensely dogmatic (in the popular 
abuse of that word) we may have found a part of what 
he says against the Pelagians, there is this to be taken 
into account, that those doctrines are not all that is to be 
found in S. Augustine. Indeed, many good judges and 

1 De Civ. Dei, v. 9. 2 Id. v. 10. 



OTHER IMPORTANT DOCTRINE yy 

eminent theologians of the Church consider that in 
such a book as Canon Mozley's Angustinian Doctrine of 
Predestination there is a grave exaggeration of the place 
which predestination held in Augustine's great rich 
mind, as compared with other doctrines, — e.g. with that 
of sacramental grace. Certainly in him predestination 
and its allied truths are not everything, much as they 
have been made so by those who took the opportunity 
which, we own, he gave them, and built up harder walls 
and higher barriers than he ever did, to shut in their 
select systems. Let S. Augustine be devoutly read 
and studied and meditated upon, and his comprehen- 
siveness will be perceived ; and in his comprehensive- 
ness is one element of his greatness. 

To "believe well concerning God" as he says in those 
words just quoted, expresses what was to him the 
foundation of religion. And his teaching concerning 
God is full of grand conception of what He is in His 
revelation of Himself to us, and of earnest counsel to 
us in our relations to Him. Many, in the freedom of 
thinking which is so rife to-day, refuse to accept any 
proper notion of God's sovereignty, and shrink with 
horror from what they conceive to be S. Augustine's 
idea of God as derived from the Anti-Pelagian writings. 
But even in those writings we maintain that his idea of 
God is not — as the author of The Continuity of Chris- 
tian Thought says — that of "absolute and arbitrary 
will in which consists the only giound of right;" 1 as 
if He were "a bloodthirsty tyrant," "a horrible kind 

1 P- 171. 



78 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

of divine Nero," as another writer puts it, who compla- 
cently declares, that S. Augustine " either did not see, 
or probably failed to appreciate the truth, that power, 
unbounded by considerations of justice, mercy, and 
goodness, is certainly arbitrary, and may be maleficent 
in its operations." 1 Neither of these, surely, are defini- 
tions of God which are justified by the writings against 
the Pelagians ; and though the ideas of Almighty Power 
and Will are there made prominent, we can see how 
this naturally came to be from the conditions of the 
controversy, and he tells us the same in his own words. 
Moreover, if any are so troubled by his teaching on this 
point as to be driven to pervert it, what would they do 
with certain well known language of S. Paul's Epistles ? 
Would they represent that this was all his teaching 
about God ? Or would they throw out these so severe 
words, and re-construct the Bible ? It might, perhaps, 
be thus better adapted to the Church which is no more 
than " the consentient reason of those who are enlight- 
ened by a divine teacher speaking within the soul!" 2 

S. Augustine, at all events, has other and fuller re- 
presentations of God. 3 Let us briefly point out his 
teaching. The Confessiones is the work which will nat- 
urally be first suggested to most minds, as full of 

1 Owen's Evenings with the Skeptics, Vol. II. p. 195. 2 Continuity 

etc. p. 150. Cf. p. 30 of this Essay. 

3 Even Mr. Owen, with all his bitterness against dogma and the 
Church, as shown in his Essay on The Skepticism of S. Augustine, 
admits the exceptional value of Augustine's teaching about God, and 
admires its combined sublimity and versatility. Vid. Evenings with the 
Skeptics, Vol. II. pp. 191, 194, 515. 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOD 79 

devout sentiment concerning God ; yet its statements 
are equalled, if not excelled, by those of the De Civi- 
tate Dei, and the De Trinitate. He feels that he cannot 
speak of God, or worthily utter His praise, — for God 
is " unspeakable ; " and even to call Him so, is "an oppo- 
sition of words which is rather to be avoided by silence 
than explained away by speech." 1 "The clearer the 
sight of Him," even, "the less is the power of expres- 
sion." 2 Yet, it is a step towards knowing what He is, 
to know what He is not. 3 God is incomprehensible; 4 
yet we may know Him, — and the knowledge of Him is 
the sublimity of attainment. 5 He is in constant ac- 
tivity, in infinite space and time ; 6 — there is no growth 
in His knowledge ; His knowledge of past, present, 
future, is all one. 7 God is incomprehensible, yet to 
be ever sought, 8 — although the imperfection of our 
knowing Him be so great, compared with the perfection 
of His knowing us. 9 God is the Eternal Light, the 
Truth, the One alone absolutely good ; IO the " good of 
all good." ZI All others are to be loved in God and for 
God. 12 God alone satisfies ; I3 He is Himself the great 
Reward, " the perfection of happiness, the sum of the 
happy life eternal." I4 "What then?" he asks, "hath 

1 De Doc. Christ, i. 6. Canon Freemantle calls this " S. Augustine's 
confession of Agnosticism " ! Bamp. Led. p. 436. 

2 Con. Epis. Manich. 21. 3 De Trin. viii. 3. * De Trin. xv. 2. 
5 De. Civ. Dei, xi. 2. 6 Id. xi. 5. 7 De Civ. Dei, xi. 21 ; De Trin. 
xv. 13, 22. 8 De Trin. xv. 2, 49. 9 Jd. ix. 1. I0 De perfec. justit. 
32 ; De nupt. etc. ii. 48. " De Trin. viii. 4. I2 Con. Faust, xxii. 78 ; 
Conf. iv. 18. I3 De Civ. Dei, x. 25; De Doc. Christ, i. 35, 27- u De 
Sp. et lit. 37, 39 ; De Civ. Dei, xxii. 30. 



80 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

God no reward ? None, save Himself. The reward of 
God is God Himself." x And, as He is the chief good, 
it is our chief good to be united to Him. 2 We seek 
Him in vain through nature alone : — " Why do we go 
forth and run to the heights of the heavens and the low- 
est parts of the earth, seeking Him who is within us, if 
we wish to be with Him ? " 3 — a remarkable utterance ; 
for with all S. Augustine's teaching of the ethical tran- 
scendence of God, he taught His true immanence ; and 
his writings are as much aglow with the thought of the 
nearness of God, 4 as they are with that of intense long- 
ing for Him. God must first be believed ; we must 
believe, before we understand ; 5 and on this point he 
has a wise caution; — "we must take care, lest the mind, 
believing that which it does not see, feign to itself some- 
thing which is not, and hope for and love that which is 
false;'' 6 — and then He is to be known and loved. 
" Who loves what he does not know ? . . . And what 
is it to know God, but to behold Him and steadfastly 
perceive Him with the mind ? " 7 There is a striking 
passage upon the love of God and one's brother ; — 
" Let no one say, I do not know what I love. Let 
him love his brother, and he will love the same love. 
For he knows the love with which he loves, more than 
the brother whom he loves. So now he can know God 
more than he knows his brother ; clearly known more, 
because more present ; known more, because more within 

1 In Ps. Ixxii. 32. 2 De Civ. Dei, x. 3. 3 De Trin. viii, 11. 
4 Con/, iv. 18, 19; v. 2; vi. 4, 26; ix. 28. s De Trin. viii. 8. 6 Id. 
viii. 6. 7 Id. 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING THE TRINITY 8 1 

him ; known more, because more certain. Embrace the 
love of God, and by love embrace God." J So believing, 
knowing, and loving Him, we must " rise to Him by 
spiritual conformity." 2 Tenderly and powerfully does 
Augustine urge our return to God, if we have strayed 
from Him ; — " In ourselves beholding His image, let 
us, like that younger son of the gospel, come to our- 
selves, and arise and return to Him from Whom by 
our sin we had departed. There our being will have 
no death, our knowledge no error, our love no mishap." 3 
Upon the great doctrine of the Trinity, S. Augustine 
is very full and strong, as we might expect from his hav- 
ing written so profound a treatise upon it ; in which, 
however, he rather traces types and resemblances in 
ourselves to the Triune nature, than assumes to give a 
purely argumentative proof, or to exhaust the full 
meaning of the doctrine. 4 In this work, as well as in 
the De Doctrina Christiana, he has language which has 
frequently been commented upon, as bearing striking 
resemblance to that of the Athanasian Creed. 5 The 
Holy Spirit, he teaches, proceeds from the Father and 
the Son: 6 He is "the unutterable communion" of 
Father and Son, yet substance, and of one substance 
with Father and Son. 7 He owns he cannot express 
the mystery, nor at all fathom the depths of God's 
nature. 8 

1 Id. viii. 12. 2 De Civ. Dei, ix. 18. 3 De Civ. Dei, xi. 28. 

4 Vid. Haddan's Preface to the translation of the Edinburgh edition, p. vi. 

5 De Trin. v. 1 1 ; De Doc. Christ, i. 5. 6 De Trin. iv. 29 ; xv. 29. 
7 De Trin. v. 12; vi. 7 ; vii. 6. 8 Id. xv. 45. 



82 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

Through the Incarnation of our Lord, he teaches, is 
our approach to God. The Son of God became Son of 
man, that sons of men might by grace become through 
Him sons of God. 1 Thus, we who have not the nature 
of God, and are yet partakers of God by His image 
which is in us, are brought nearer through the God- 
man. 2 This Incarnation is a true taking of humanity 
into the Divine Person of the Word : — " That nativity 
. . . conjoined, in the unity of the person, man to 
God, flesh to the Word." 3 "At the very moment 
that He began to be Man, He was nothing else than 
the Son of God ; ... so Christ in one person unites the 
Word and man." 4 "So far as He is God, He and the 
Father are one ; so far as He is man, the Father is 
greater than He." 5 This is "the Incarnation of the 
unchangeable Son of God, whereby we are saved." 6 It 
is the richest grace to us. "The grace of God could not 
have been more graciously commended to us, than thus, 
that the only Son of God, remaining unchangeable in 
Himself, should assume humanity;" 7 — and thus "He 
leads us straight to that Trinity by participation in 
which the angels themselves are blessed." 8 The In- 
carnation was to convince men of what seemed incredi- 
ble. 9 It was to teach humility. 10 It was to demonstrate 
to man his place in God's creation;™ to show "at how 
great a price God rated us, and how greatly He loved 

1 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 15. 2 De Trin. xiv. 1 1 ; cf. De Civ. Dei, xi. 2. 
3 De correp. et grat. 30. 4 Enchirid. xxxvi. s Id. xxxv. 6 De 
Civ. Dei, x. 29. 7 De Civ. Dei, x. 29. 8 Id. ix. 15. 9 De Trin. 
xiii. 12. IO Id. xiii. 22. " Id. 



THE INCARNATION— THE ANGELS S3 

us." 1 Christ the Mediator 'is continually presented to 
our thought, mediating on earth and in heaven ; "shed- 
ding His innocent blood for the remission of our sins," 2 
and that by a voluntary sacrifice ; 3 — rising again, and 
taking His glorious Body up into the heavenly places. 4 

This Father has extensive teaching in relation to 
The Angels, — their creation, nature, relations to us 
present and future, etc., upon which we cannot dwell, 
but to which we will simply allude. A point of much 
interest is his belief that the angels who did not fall 
shall never fall, — have an eternal blessedness assured 
to them, as the reward of their fidelity ; 5 and another, 
that the redeemed and saved among men are to make 
good the places, in bliss, of the angels who were lost. 6 
Our earthliness prevents our nearer fellowship now 
with the holy angels ; 7 to be ranked with them here- 
after will be the height of our perfection. 8 

Of the teaching of S. Augustine upon The Sacra- 
ments and their grace we have already spoken to some 
extent, and have given many passages bearing upon the 
subject, especially in reference to Holy Baptism, as 
that subject came before us in treating of the Donatist 
controversy. But there is much more to be said ; and 
the topic might worthily receive even much fuller con- 

1 Id. xiii. 13. 2 Id. xiii. 18. 3 Id. iv. 16. 4 De Civ. Dei, x. 29. 
5 Id. xi. 13; xxii. 1. 6 Enchirid. lxi. 7 De Civ. Dei, viii. 25. 

8 Con. Faust, xxii. 28. In this connection it may be observed that 
S. Augustine has been severely criticised by some for departing from the 
earlier tradition in teaching that The Angel of the Lord in the Old Testa- 
ment was not the Son of God. Vid. Medd's One Mediator ; cf. Liddon's 
Divinity of our Lord, p. 55. 



84 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

sideration than we now give it. Augustine often uses 
the word sacrament in its extended sense, as is com- 
mon among the Fathers ; — sometimes in a very loose 
way, e.g. distinguishing "the sacrament of baptism" 
from "the sacrament of conferring baptism." 1 He 
tersely contrasts the sacraments of the new with those 
of the old dispensation; the former, few, simple, majes- 
tic, sacred, "such, e.g. as the sacrament of baptism, and 
the celebration of the Body and Blood of the Lord." 2 
Even as a visible symbol, for a bond of union, "their 
importance cannot be overstated, and only scoffers will 
treat them lightly." 3 In one passage he dwells upon 
the resemblance of sacraments to the things of which 
they are the sacraments, and says " if they had not 
such resemblance, they would not be sacraments at 
all;" 4 and continues, — "in most cases, moreover, they 
do, in virtue of this likeness, bear the names of the 
realities which they resemble : " — so, he says, " in a 
certain manner, the sacrament of Christ's Body is 
Christ's Body, and the sacrament of Christ's Blood is 
Christ's Blood ; " 4 where the connection shows that he 
means to refer to the deep spiritual mystery of this 
sacrament. It is not a literal, carnal death, i.e. which 
takes place in the Eucharist ; the death is sacramen- 
tally celebrated. "Was not Christ," he says, "once for 
all offered up in His own Person as a sacrifice? and 
yet, is He not likewise offered up in the sacrament as 
a sacrifice ? " 4 In another place he well distinguishes 

1 De Baptismo, i. 2. 2 De Doc. Christ, iii. 13 ; Con. Faust, xix. 13, 14. 
3 Con. Faust, xix. 11. 4 Ep. xcviii. 9, ad Bonifacium. 



DOCTRINE OF THE SACRAMENTS 85 

between the outward and the inward ; — " The material 
symbols are nothing else than visible speech, which, 
though sacred, is changeable and transitory. While 
God is eternal, the water of baptism and all that is 
material in the sacrament is transitory ; the very word 
* God,' which must be pronounced in the consecration, 
is a sound which passes in a moment. The actions and 
sounds pass away, but their efficacy remains the same, 
and the spiritual gift thus communicated is eternal." x — 
In reference to the special grace of Baptism we venture 
to give one more passage in addition to those previously 
cited: — " This is the meaning of the great sacrament 
of baptism which is solemnized among us, that all who 
attain to this grace should die to sin, . . . and rising 
from the font regenerate, . . . should begin a new life 
in the Spirit, whatever may be the age of the body" 2 — 
words which are strikingly like those of our Baptismal 
Offices. Referring now a little more fully to S. Au- 
gustine's Eucharistic teaching, — it may be observed 
that in his explanation of S. John vi. 53 ("except ye 
eat the flesh " etc.) in the De Doctrina Christiana, he at 
first appears to teach only the low and merely memorial 
significance of the Sacrament. He is illustrating the 
interpretation of figures and figurative expressions in 
Scripture. These words, he says, are " a figure, — en- 
joining that we should have a share in the sufferings of 
our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profit- 
able memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded 
and crucified for us." 3 This is all true enough. But 

1 Con. Faust, xix. 16. 2 Enchirid. xlii. 3 De Doctr. Christ, iii. 24. 



86 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

we must examine what further teaching he may have 
upon the Eucharist. He says in the De Trinitate 
(iii. 10) that "the fruits of the earth, consecrated by 
mystic prayer, and received duly to our spiritual health, 
are sanctified to become so great a sacrament only by 
the Spirit of God working invisibly." Here is the ad- 
ditional idea of the Divine power accomplishing the con- 
secration, and making the Sacrament Divine food to us. 
There is grace in the Sacrament. In a passage of the 
De Civitate Dei (xvii. 20) there is a still fuller meaning. 
He is explaining the words — " Wisdom hath builded 
her an house " etc. " The Wisdom of God, the Word 
coeternal with the Father, hath builded Him an House, 
even a human body in the virgin womb, and hath sub- 
joined the Church to it as members to an head, 
. . . hath furnished a table with wine and bread," etc. 
. . . "To be made partakers of this table is itself to 
begin to have life." . . . "This table . . . the Mediator 
of the New Testament Himself . . . furnishes with His 
own Body and Blood." . . . "That sacrifice has suc- 
ceeded all the sacrifices of the Old Testament." . . . 
" Instead of all these sacrifices and oblations His Body 
is offered, and is served up to the partakers of it." Here 
is the distinct statement, that what we receive in the 
Sacrament, which was before taught to be spiritual 
food, is the Body and Blood of the Lord. Again, in the 
De Civitate Dei (xxi. 25) "What it is in reality, and not 
sacramentally, to eat His Body and drink His Blood," 
he says Christ Himself shows ; — " this is to dwell in 
Christ, that He also may dwell in us. It is as if He 



THE REAL PRESENCE 87 

said, — he that dwelleth not in Me and in whom I do 
not dwell, let him not say or think that he eateth My 
Body or drinketh My Blood ; " — words which justify the 
reference to Augustine in our Art. XXIX., as teaching 
that the wicked are in no wise partakers of Christ, 
although they sacramentally receive His Body. The 
passages cited are sufficient to show that the Real 
Presence of Christ in His Sacrament was the belief 
of S. Augustine. And as for such expressions, written 
elsewhere, as " Why make ready the teeth and the 
belly? Believe and thou hast eaten;" — "To believe 
on Him, this is to eat the living Bread," — they are 
in entire harmony with his other teaching ; and more- 
over, if pressed, might go to establish the rednctio ad 
absiirdwn that the Real Presence was not believed by 
even Paschasius himself, who once wrote " Christum 
vorari fas dentibus non est," — as of course every be- 
liever in the Real Presence would acknowledge. 1 — 
The sacrifice in the Eucharist he as plainly affirms ; 
and presents as clearly as possible the great sacramen- 
tal truth of the Church's offering of herself in and with 
the offering of the great High Priest. His definition 
of a true sacrifice is most excellent, as being "every 
work done that we may be united to God in holy fellow- 
ship, and which has reference to that supreme good 
and end in which alone we can be truly blessed ; " 2 and 
his teaching is, that "the whole redeemed city, i.e. 
the congregation or community of the saints, is offered 
to God as our sacrifice through the great High Priest, 
1 Vid. Ch. Quart. Rev. Vol. IX. p. 209. 8 De Civ. Dei, x. 6. 



88 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

Who, that we might be members of this glorious Head, 
offered Himself to God in His Passion for us, in the 
form of a servant. . . . This is the sacrifice of Chris- 
tians ; we, being many, are one Body in Christ. And 
this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually 
celebrates in the sacramejtt of the altar y known to the 
faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered 
in the offering site makes to God." x 

Prayer for the faithful departed had been the custom 
of the Church long before S. Augustine's day. It is 
not strange, then, that we find direct and indirect 
teaching on this point in his works. When his holy 
mother, Monica, was taken from him, her dying request 
was this, " Lay my body anywhere, let not the care 
for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you 
will remember me at the Lord's altar wherever you 
be." 2 And he begs all who read his Confessions to thus 
remember her, — that so her last entreaty may be 
more abundantly fulfilled to her through the prayers of 
the many. 3 We find him also elsewhere teaching the 
benefit to the departed of prayers, and alms, and the 
Sacrament of the altar. 4 He affirms, however, as if 
guarding against the danger of a departure from primi- 
tive usage, that no prayer is of avail for those who die 
impenitent ; — "no one need hope that after he is dead 
he shall obtain merit with God which he has neglected 
to secure here ; " 5 — though he does condone the making 
of offerings for such, as a kind of comfort to the living. 6 

1 Id. 2 Confess, ix. 27. 3 Id. ix. 37. 4 Enchirid. ex.; De Civ. 
Dei, xxi. 24, 27. s Enchirid. ex. 6 Id. ; also vid. Serin, xxxii. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 89 

Not only prayer and sacrament for the departed are 
taught, but the prayers of the saints for us are invoked. 
"May he help us by his prayers," — he writes of 
S. Cyprian departed; and for this aid he says he 
longs. 1 

The Intermediate State, he teaches, is one in which 
"the soul dwells in a hidden retreat, where it enjoys 
rest or suffers affliction just in proportion to the merit 
it has earned by the life which it led on earth." 2 Con- 
nected with his teaching on this point is what he says 
upon the need of cleansing to the soul in this Inter- 
mediate State, and how far it is of avail. He writes in 
one place that souls " when purged from all contagion 
of corruption are placed in peaceful abodes until they 
take their bodies again." 3 Again he connects this 
cleansing with the Judgment ; — "it appears . . . that 
some shall in the last Judgment suffer some kind of 
purgatorial punishments ; " 4 though in another place 
his teaching is that we are not to "fancy that there 
are any purgatorial pains except before that final and 
dreadful judgment." 5 Some "shall not even suffer 
purgatorial torments after death." 6 He has a great 
deal to say in his writings, of the need of the soul's 
being cleansed, — purified, — that it may have power to 
see God : in this life "men see Him just so far as they 
die to this world ; and so far as they live to it they see 
Him not ;" 7 and he but carries his idea on to the other 

1 De Baptismo, v. 23; vii. 1. 2 Enchirid. cix. Stronger language is 
used in Depraedest. sanct. 24. 3 De Trin. xv. 44. 4 De Civ. Dei, xx. 25. 
5 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 13, 16. 6 Id. xxi. 16. 7 De Doc. Christ, i. 10; ii. II. 



90 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

world, in all that he says about purgatorial discipline ; 
yet his doctrine is on the whole obscure. He more 
than once gives lengthy explanation of the text — 
"saved, yet so as by fire." He interprets the fire — 
of affliction, and grief, and tribulation ; and then, after 
referring to a fire between death and the judgment, 
adds — " if it be said that [such] worldliness, being 
venial, shall be consumed in the fire of tribulation, 
either here only, or here and hereafter both, or here 
that it may not be hereafter, — this I do not contradict, 
because possibly it is true." r He is not sure here ; and 
in another work he shows the same uncertainty, and 
says "it is a matter that may be inquired into, and 
either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some be- 
lievers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire 
after this life." 2 

Future punishment he believes to be eternal ; and 
severely rebukes Origen (whom he says " the Church 
has condemned for this and other errors " ) for his wild 
fancy of restoring even the devil and his angels to the 
abodes of the blessed ! 3 He teaches " different degrees 
of punishment among the lost, as of glory among the 
saved." He inclines to the opinion that the fire of 
punishment is " material ; " 4 but this is only opinion, 
while the doctrine itself he holds to be of the faith ; 
and he solemnly declares, that " to be lost out of the 
kingdom of God, — to be an exile from the city of God, 
— to be alienated from the life of God" — would be 

1 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 26. 2 Enchirid. lxix. 3 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 17. 
4 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 2. 



THE FUTURE LIFE 91 

incomparably greater punishment than any torments 
one can conceive of. 1 

The resurrection he believes is to be of the body of 
flesh, yet far different from the present mortal flesh ; 2 
a spiritual body, 3 of exceeding beauty and dignity ; 4 — 
yet having the very same material as now, only differ- 
ently arranged. 5 

The eternal felicity in the future life of the blessed 
he most eloquently describes ; — that life " where neces- 
sity shall have no place, but full, certain, secure, ever- 
lasting felicity," where "there shall be the enjoyment 
of a beauty which appeals to reason," where "the body 
shall be forthwith wherever the spirit wills, and the 
spirit shall will nothing which is unbecoming either to 
the spirit or to the body," where " true honor " and true 
peace shall be, where there shall be " a higher freedom 
than that of the first man, who had the ability not to 
sin," even the highest freedom of will " not able to sin ; " 
where "we shall rest and see, see and love, love and 
praise ; " where " God Himself, Who is the Author of 
virtue, shall be its reward ; for as there is nothing 
greater or better He has promised Himself;" where "we 
shall have eternal leisure to see that He is God ; for 
we shall be full of Him, when He shall be all in all." 6 

In reference to all these many and varied teachings 
of the great Latin Father, we have thought it more 
just to let him speak for himself; and, though briefly 

1 Enchirid. cxii. 2 De Civ. Dei, xxi. 3, 8. 3 Id. xxii. 21. 

4 Id. xxii. 19, 24. s Enchirid. lxxxix. 6 De Civ. Dei, xxii. 30. 



92 SAINT A UG US TINE 

stating our opinion of his doctrine from point to point, 
to call careful attention rather to what he actually 
tatight. And we would hope that our exposition has 
been fair to him, whose teaching we would have all 
Christian people, and especially all the clergy, reverently 
study. To thus study must be more and more to ad- 
mire, and, within the bounds of Catholic truth, to 
gratefully accept. For, in spite of those hard theories 
and rigid reasonings of his about certain relations of 
God to man ; as Maurice says, " the root of the matter 
was in him, an essential acknowledgment of God's 
absolute good-will, and nearness to us," r and he wrought 
out these great principles with wondrous intellectual 
power, emotional fervor, and spiritual devotion. 



What has been the influence of S. Augustine ? How 
extensive has it been, — and has it been for good or ill ? 
What is it likely to be? These are questions which 
will be variously answered, according to the stand- 
point of knowledge or sympathy. While he lived, that 
holy humble life, wherein worked a strong will, must 
have been a mighty factor of influence. The charge of 
hierarchical pretensions, which a few modern writers 
have unkindly brought against him, has no good war- 
rant. Nor did his dogmatic earnestness in upholding 
doctrine, as Milman justly allows, indicate so much 

1 Life etc. Vol. II. p. 167. The reader may note how widely different 
is this estimate from that of the author of The Continuity of Christian 
Thought. 



HIS INFLUENCE IN THE PAST 93 

any " ambition of dictating to Christianity on these 
abstruse topics," as "the desire of peace to his own 
anxious spirit." l And the will has been well affirmed 
to be no weak one, which wrought out his doctrines 
into a system, and mi historical force. His writings 
went far and wide throughout Western and even into 
Eastern Christendom ; and, as they spread, his opin- 
ions gained an increasing influence. At the close of 
his career of nearly forty years as priest and Bishop in 
Hippo, he had successfully met the errors of Manichae- 
ism and Donatism, and had broken the delusive spell 
of Pelagianism ; and in his writings as a whole had so 
established the claims of the Christian Church, and so 
formulated Christian doctrine, as to have achieved the 
position of leader of the thought of the Christian world. 
Easily and admittedly the superior of all the Fathers of 
the West, in any age, — Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory ; — 
he need not be compared with his great predecessors 
in the East, while he was then manifestly far above all 
his contemporaries. 2 

Yet even that greatness was not a perfect ideal. 
The discussions which had sprung up all about him 
during the few last years of his life, the replies which 
he had been obliged to make upon this or that point of 
doctrine, to satisfy the questionings of those who desired 
to go all lengths with him in his beliefs, or to meet the 
bolder and bolder attacks of some open enemy, show 

1 History of Christianity, Vol. III. p. 177. 

2 S. Athanasius can hardly be called a contemporary of S. Augustine. 
He died in the year 373, when S. Augustine was not yet twenty years old. 



94 SAINT A UG USTINE 

the vitality which still thrived in the error which he 
had been so long opposing, and are also a pointed com- 
ment upon the imperfection of any human system. 
Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism was not yet dead : 
it had truth with its error. Augustine must reason, 
and restrict, and define ; he must save his human 
theories ; he must carry his philosophical speculations 
up into the mysteries of God's Being. The inquiries 
and the opposition had come chiefly from Southern 
Gaul and from certain parts of Italy ; and soon after 
his death they took more and more definite shape of 
hostility against Predestinarianism, 1 as fatalistic, de- 
rogatory to the mercy of God, and destroying the 
responsibility of man. To this period belongs the 
supposed protest of Vincent of Lerins, the "semper, 
ubique, et ab omnibus" very likely meant to meet Au- 
gustine on his own ground. 2 The controversy which 
had thus sprung up anew, and was bitterly carried on 
for a century, was at length settled largely through the 
influence of Caesarius, Archbishop of Aries, by a local 
council which he held for his province, in Orange, in 
a.d. 529. This council (of fourteen Bishops) formally 
adopted a series of articles which Caesarius had re- 
ceived from Rome. These articles are strong in their 
condemnation of Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, 

1 Especially any predestination to evil, which some deduced from S. 
Augustine's doctrine. 

2 Vid. Neander, C/i. Hist. Vol. II. p. 696; and compare the passage in 
the De Util. Cred. 31, — "This therefore I have believed, trusting to re- 
port strengthened by numbers (ab omnibus), agreement (ubique), antiq- 
uity" (semper). 



MODIFIED B V THE LA TIN CHURCH 95 

and draw most of their authority directly from the 
works of S. Augustine ; but they do not mention pre- 
destination to life, — and thus they show a " cautious 
and discriminating adhesion ; " x while they go on to 
declare the capability of all the baptized, by Christ's 
aid and cooperation, to fulfil the conditions of salvation, 
and they anathematize all who hold that any are "pre- 
destinated to evil by divine power." 2 Thus, as says 
Canon Bright, "this little Gallican Council earned the 
respect and gratitude of ages, for having brought a 
great question to a comprehensive settlement, and 
preserved the Christianity of Western Europe from a 
one-sidedness baneful to its soul-attracting power." 3 

We are brought, then, to the fact of a serious modi- 
fication of Augustine s doctrine, as accepted by the 
Latins ; — a modification which has ever since shaped 
the authoritative attitude of the Roman Church towards 
his teaching. Modified or unmodified, that doctrine 
reigned supreme throughout the West for a thousand 
years, down to the time of the Continental Reforma- 
tion. And it may be owned, that, under the darkness 
and ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages, it 
was not, as a system, an unmixed good. With a sense 
of sin overpowering and deepening, — something which 
he had taught them, — men kept dwelling too much 
upon one part of the Augustinian teaching about God 

1 Canon Bright's Introduction etc. ut sup. p. lxv. 

2 The Acts of the Second Council of Orange are given at the close of 
Canon Bright's valuable edition of The Anti- Pelagian Treatises, pp. 384- 
392. 

3 Introduction etc. p. lxvi. 



96 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

and His government of the world. All classes of peo- 
ple, too, in blind submission to authority, were coming 
too much under the sway of that one master-mind. 
" Augustinum, quern contradicere fas noil est," says 
Paschasius : — his authority was put next to the Bible, 1 
perhaps equal or superior to it, by many : it was too 
much influence for any one system ; it was making man 
master of conscience and of life. 

Gregory the Great was the first distinguished disciple 
of S. Augustine ; and his writings breathe the devout 
spirit of his master, and take almost his very thought 
and language. 2 Sometimes, in doctrine, he goes beyond 
him ; noticeably, in the direction of mediaeval Roman- 
ism, in reference to purgatory. 3 But it was in Scholas- 
ticism that the influence of S. Augustine was more 
extensively known. Among the schoolmen, S. Bernard, 
S. Anselm, and S. Thomas Aquinas are those who 
chiefly maintained and developed his teaching; — pre- 
eminent among them all is S. Thomas. He is univer- 
sally acknowledged as the great theologian of the middle 
ages ; and his complex system, so rich in thought, with 
its doctrines of free-will, and necessity, and divine 
power, and predestination, and creation, and grace, is 
directly built up upon the Augustinian foundation, — 
with added original features, and modifications to some 
extent of Augustine's accredited severity, especially in 

1 Vid. Poole's Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval Thought, p. 174. 

2 Cf . Moral, xx. 1 ; and vid. what Abp. Trench says of " the influence 
of Gregory's great teacher." S. Augustine as an Interpreter etc. ut sup. 

P- J 3- 

3 Vid. Hardwick's Middle Age, pp. 62-64, and notes. 



PERVERTED BY THE REFORMERS 97 

reference to predestination. 1 All this might be devel- 
oped with great interest in a fuller consideration of the 
subject than we have aimed to give in this monograph. 

At the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth 
century, the Roman Church is supposed to have lost 
much of its active interest, to say the least, in the doc- 
trines of the great Latin Father, owing to the way in 
which they were used or abused by the Reformers. 
The decrees of the Council of Trent, in part, show 
this. The shaping of those decrees was largely the 
work of the Jesuits, whose theology was a direct re- 
action from Luther's opinions, which were presumed 
to be based upon the teachings of S. Augustine. But, 
on the other hand, it is to be said that Luther may 
have misunderstood or perverted S. Augustine, as as- 
suredly Jansenius, in the next century, exaggerated 
and perverted S. Augustine : and that certainly the 
Roman Church so considered it, and in its condemna- 
tion of Jansenism did not thereby necessarily condemn 
Augustinian doctrine. In fact, the Roman Church to- 
day would not venture to exclude that doctrine "from 
the pale of tolerated opinion ; " 2 much as she might 
like to do so because of some of his teachings, which 
directly militate against her own claims. 

Although the unquestioned dominion of S. Augustine 
was broken in the convulsions of the sixteenth century, 

1 For these modifications, vid. Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine etc. 
p. 285, et seq. 

2 Canon Mozley, we think, could scarcely make good his words on 
p. 226, n. of the Augustinian Doctrine etc 



98 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

it is commonly said that his influence has lived since 
then in the opinions of the great Reformers, — in those 
of Luther, and still more in those of Calvin. And this 
is true ; and yet, we should claim, not precisely in the 
way in which the descendants and disciples of those 
men would say. S. Augustine did influence, and influ- 
ence profoundly, both Luther and Calvin ; and we thank 
God for all the good influence which his Catholic doc- 
trine had upon them ; but, unfortunately, it was, far 
more, certain of his exaggerations of doctrine which 
influenced them, which they then exaggerated to a 
still greater degree ; so that the question becomes, 
How far is Lutheranism or Calvinism a fair reproduc- 
tion of the teachings of S. Augustine ? 

A full answer to this question cannot be given within 
our present limits : but a few points may be noted. 
Luther made S. Augustine his great teacher in the- 
ology. 1 And in his writings he has not only reproduced 
much of the thought of his teacher, but has handed 
down to modern times — that which but for him they 
might not have so fully known — a breathing forth, if 
I may call it, of the Augustinian spirit. Yet all along 
we have to distinguish that spirit from the spirit of his 
own teachings, — and often in most important doc- 
trines. His doctrine of original sin, e.g. was very dif- 
ferent from that of Augustine. He taught that man 
was so utterly ruined by the Fall, that the operation of 
God's Spirit in him finds as little response as in a brute 

1 To William of Occam he owed his theory of Consubstantiation in the 
Eucharist. 



COMPARED WITH LUTHER 99 

or a devil. Here are some of his words : — " The intel- 
lectual faculties are not only corrupted, but they are 
totally annihilated by si?t in man exactly the same as in 
devils ; so that in them there is nothing but a corrupt 
spirit, a perverse will, hostile to God in everything." " 
This is not, if we apprehend it, the Augustinian doc- 
trine, which makes so much of the Image of God still 
remaining in man. Again, such a view of original sin 
would bid Luther, as he did, deny all freedom of the 
will. As he teaches, — " In spiritual and divine things, 
man is as the pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was 
turned ; yea, he is like a stick or a stone, which is life- 
less, etc." 2 "Free-will, after original sin, is a mere 
name," 3 he says. But S. Augustine, as we think we 
have fully shown, whatever may be made of his the- 
oretical distinctions, did not at all deny the practical 
freedom of the will, and the responsibility which flowed 
therefrom. Luther made justification only a judicial 
act of God, delivering from the punishment of sin, but 
not from sin itself. All righteousness is external to 
us ; 4 is such a literal imputation of Christ's righteous- 
ness, as to make His righteousness and obedience ours ; 
which subverts Christian morality. S. Augustine, 
teaching that they are "justified in Christ who believe 
in Him, by a secret communion and inspiration of 
spiritual grace, which makes every one who cleaves to 
the Lord ' one spirit ' with Him," 5 does not go 

1 Ed. Wittenberg, i. 99. 2 In Genes, chap. xix. 3 In the Paradoxes ; 
Vid. Hardwick's Reformation, p. 29. 4 Solid. Declar. iii. de Fid. Justif. 
§ 11, § 48. s De peccat. merit, i. II, 



IOO SAINT AUGUSTINE 

anything like as far as Luther ; and appears to present 
a very different doctrine. With him, it is rather the 
Power of Christ dwelling in us, His Life working 
in us, whereby we cleave to Him, and produce good 
works. 1 But the main distinction appears in reference 
to Luther's all-controlling tenet of yustiftcation by faith. 
This was held in such a way as almost to exclude 
repentance, to exclude good works, to make faith 
amount to assurance. Justification by faith only, he 
was never tired of proclaiming. "He is not justified 
who does many works, but he who without any work 
has much faith in Christ." 2 And what does his theory 
of faith become ? A man has faith " when he believes 
that he has been received by God into grace ; " 3 
faith, then, is assurance ; when I believe I am saved, I 
am saved, by this "self-confident assurance of indi- 
vidual interest in Christ's sacrifice," which Mr. Sadler 
well describes as "foreclosing a man's probation the 
moment he believes, or thinks he believes " ! 4 And 
the dreadful carrying out of this doctrine of faith only 
into its relation to sin cannot be disguised nor explained 
away: — "Be a sinner," says Luther, "and sin stoutly" 
(" esto peccator; et pecca fortiter") — "but the more 
bravely trust and rejoice in Christ, Who is the con- 
queror of sin, death, and the world. Here we must sin y 
as long as we live," (" peccandum est, quamdiu sic 

1 For some most valuable teaching upon this aspect of justification, 
vid. Sadler's Justification of Life, pp. 339, 347, etc. 

2 Paradoxes. 3 Atigsburg Confession, Art. iv. 4 Justification of 
Life, pp. 74, 209. 



COMPARED WITH LUTHER 101 

sumus") . . . From Him sin shall not separate us, 
though we commit whoredom or murder a thousand 
thousand times in one day. Thinkest thou that the 
price and redemption offered for our sins by this Divine 
Lamb is so small that it cannot avail to cover your 
sham sins? Pray boldly; thou art a most bold sinner." 
(" Ora fortiter ; es enim fortissimus peccator.") 1 Need 
we say that S. Augustine has nothing like all this ? 
Faith alone y with him, means alone as against nature or 
the law ; as where he says that " nothing but belief in 
the Mediator saved the saints of the Old Testament ; " 2 
or as against works done in our own strength alone ; 
as in that decisive passage where he commends the one 
of few works and great faith, and declares that "he 
shall be delivered for this life, and depart to be received 
into the company of those who shall reign with 
Christ." 3 And can any passage be found, where he is 
so carried away by ideas of faith, or grace, as to utter 
the shocking sentiments of Luther ? Faith in Christ, 
he tells us, will give us true righteousness, — and by 
this power we can gain victory over sin. By this " love 
of God" working in us vices are to be overcome. "We 
must declare war upon them, and wage this war keenly, 
lest we be landed in damnable sins." Thus only can we 
come to " the end of this war," and " the well-ordered 
peace " for which we long. 4 

1 Given in the late Dr. Mill's Five Sermons on the Nature of Chris- 
tianity ; notes, p. 131-2. 

2 Con. duas literas etc. i. 39. 3 Con. duas literas etc. iii. 14. 4 De 
Civ. Dei, xxi. 15, 16. 



102 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

As regards Calvin, very different observations need to 
be made, although in some ways he and Luther were alike 
in their reproduction and perversion of S. Augustine. 
Calvin had a more just view than Luther of original 
sin, and admitted some degree of human cooperation. 1 
Calvin's view of assurance was like Luther's. "Joined 
to Christ, the believer has life in Him, and knows that 
lie is saved." Calvin, however, with his strong logical 
mind, used the influence of S. Augustine, far more than 
Luther ever did or could, in forming a system. That 
system was built up upon absolute predestination. And 
here he went far beyond even the strictest Augustinian 
statements ; and propounded a theory which not only 
has to do with both saved and lost, (and it is an open 
question how far Augustine taught the predestination 
of the lost) but also denies regenerating grace to the 
baptized. Baptism is only " obsignatory " of grace 
which one already had if he were a child of grace, one 
of the elect. 2 If not, he only partakes of the material 
element. This is radically different from S. Augustine's 
teaching, which is that all the worthily baptized are 
truly regenerate, and thus partakers of grace ; though 
we cannot say who of them are predestinated, and will 
finally attain to perseverance. Moreover, Calvin affirms 
that " God intentionally produces within those who are 
not elect an apparent faith ; that He insinuates Him- 
self into the souls of the reprobate, in order to render 
them less excusable" ! 3 We have yet to find a parallel 

1 Instit. lib. ii. c. 3. 2 Hardwick's Reformation, pp. 130, 176. 

3 Instit. 1. iii. c. 2, n. 11. 



COMPARED WITH CALVIN 1 03 

to anything like this in S. Augustine. With all his 
rigidity, tenderness is manifest. God permits evil, in 
justice; 1 but only that He may bring out of it greater 
good ; 2 and those who commit the greatest evil are not 
estranged from His goodness. 3 He cannot explain 
God's decrees. They are inscrutable. But there he 
stops : he leaves them a mystery ; bidding us not ques- 
tion nor complain ; and again and again taking up the 
refrain, " O altitiido ! " 

Thus we have endeavored to suggest that while both 
Luther and Calvin deeply felt the influence of S. Au- 
gustine, and to a degree handed on that influence to 
those who came after them, they did not always appre- 
ciate or follow it ; and so they must not by any means 
always be taken fairly to represent him. As Hardwick 
writes, in reference to the influence of the Calvinists 
in the Lambeth Articles, — they so " exaggerated, and 
curtailed, and contradicted," that even with much 
"similarity of language " they wrought "a profound if 
not a fundamental change " in the teaching of Augus- 
tine. 4 The modern world should never be suffered to 
forget that what is Lutheran or Calvinistic is ?zot neces- 
sarily Augustinian. How far S. Augustine is respon- 
sible for their mistakes, is a question too deep and 
complex for man to answer. He gave them the oppor- 
tunity, as we have already admitted. Moreover, the 
rejection of their errors is not always seen to have 
the purest motive. In the re-action of our day from 

1 Enchirid. xcvi.; De Trin. xiii. 16. 2 Enchirid. xxvii. ; De Civ. 
Dei, xxii. 1. 3 De Trin. xiii. 16. 4 History of the Articles, p. 164. 



1 04 SAINT A UGUSTINE 

the " mischief" — so called — of Calvinism, we may- 
observe, with trained vision, both a recoil from a nar- 
rowing and base bondage, which God never appointed ; 
and also a desire for a freedom which is lawlessness 
and license. In the modern Reformers, and in the 
ancient Saint and Father, let us take the Catholic truth, 
and throw away the individual error. 

A special study might be made of the influence of S. 
Augustine upon our own Prayer-Book and Articles. 
Much of the thought and even of the exact language 
of the Articles, as we have hinted, is his. The Arti- 
cles, as we now possess them, have a history ; and that 
history makes known many changes from severity to 
moderation and cautiousness of statement ; and in 
effecting these changes, their teaching has become not 
so much that of Calvin as that of Luther, and not so 
much that of Luther as that of S. Augustine. 1 But 
we are more interested in the teaching of the Ser- 
vices. Directly or indirectly, — in their statements con- 
cerning God and man, sin and grace, faith and good 
works, the constitution and authority of the Church, 
and the blessing of the Sacraments, — their teaching 
is Augustinian. It is read in the Ordinal, in the 

1 For the teaching and much of the very language of Articles IX., X., 
XL, XII., XVII., XXV., XXVI., XXVII., XXIX., the reader may con- 
sult De nupt. et concupis. i. 28, ii 45 ; De peccat. remiss, ii. 44, 45 ; De fid. 
et oper. 14, De Baptismo, passim; Tract, xxvi. in S. John Ev. § 18; in 
addition to the many passages already given which have a clear bearing 
upon the composition of the Articles. Bp. Forbes, of Brechin, calls the 
Seventeenth Article "a concise summary of S. Augustine's teaching" 
upon predestination. 



INFLUENCE UPON THE PRAYER-BOOK 105 

Liturgy, in the Baptismal Offices, in the Daily Offices, 
and in the Collects. Very naturally much of this teach- 
ing has felt the moulding of the Continental Reforma- 
tion ; but even that portion did not conform itself to 
sixteenth century models ; while much was taken 
direct from ancient service-books, — as e.g. two-thirds 
of the Collects which come from the Sacramentaries 
of Gregory and Gelasius and Leo ; and it is worthy of 
note how fully, in her reverting to primitive Catholicity, 
the Anglican Church was satisfied to go back only to S. 
Augustine. And this, we would believe, was not from 
a blind subjection to him ; nor from failure to discover 
some purer or more Catholic doctrine, of more remote 
East, or nearer West ; nor 07ily was it because S. Au- 
gustine had been the first to formulate dogmatic teach- 
ing, and his influence had permeated others, as a 
Gregory, or a Leo ; but because the Augustinian 
teaching was seen to mirror, so fully and faithfully, that 
of the Word of God and primitive antiqicity. 

Thus much concerning the return to S. Augustine 
may fit us to look forward a little, and say in few 
words, what we think is likely to be his influence in 
the future. His influence is fairly established in 
the present ; — insecurely perhaps, in the outside world 
of sect and dissent, because of the many Lutheran 
and Calvinistic modifications ; though even there with 
increasing stability, from the very law of God's truth 
refining itself away from error ; but surely, firmly, 
grandly, in the historic Church of Christ. And every- 
where this is so evident, that the author who so depre- 



106 SAINT AUGUSTINE 

cates " the lingering hold of Augustine upon the modern 
mind" deems it so "formidable an obstacle" that it 
will need " an intellectual revolution " 1 to shake us 
from this subjection and bring us back to freedom. 
We have sufficiently shown why we think such a revo- 
lution is not likely soon to take place ; why we deem 
the certainty of the present the best promise for the 
future. Nor can we consider the rejection of his teach- 
ing anything less than perilous to the best interests of 
Christianity in the world. God raised up this man for 
a great work in the world ; and that work is not accom- 
plished. It has abiding elements, which belong to 
humanity. S. Augustine is as much needed as ever; 
and he will continue to be needed, — both negatively, 
against Manichaeans, and Donatists, and Pelagians, 
and Semi-Pelagians ; and positively, for the great 
teachings of grace in the One Name and the One 
Church. He is not in reality in contradiction with 
the more primitive East ; nor is he alien to the best 
spirit of the modern world. He saves Christianity 
from the dreamy speculations of the East ; while he 
teaches us all better to know ourselves, and our destiny 
in God. To Him he guides us ; and to Him, our God, 
we would make his teaching lead us; — with his own 
words on our lips and in our hearts, for faith and obedi- 
ence, for devotion and peace : — " Da quodjubes, etjube 
quod vis." " Fecisti nos ad Te ; et inquietum est cor 
nostrum , donee requiescat in Te." 

1 Continuity of Christian Thought, p. II. 



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